Gossip network algorithms, as the name suggests, are built upon a gossip or rumour style unreliable, asynchronous information exchange protocol. They provide algorithmic architecture of choice for many of the emerging networks - such as sensor networks, peer-to-peer networks, social networks and mobile networks of vehicles - that are primarily not designed for, but required to perform communication and computation. Examples include, estimation algorithms in sensor networks, broadcasting news through a peer-to-peer network, or viral advertising in a social network.

Gossip Algorithms captures the recent excitement in this interdisciplinary topic that is witnessed across the fields of communication, computation, control, signal processing and algorithms.