The field of distributed systems is moving towards addressing the challenges posed by network latencies and delays. Researchers are developing innovative algorithms and control methods to optimize performance and stability in the presence of these delays. A key area of focus is the development of distributed optimization algorithms that can handle heterogeneous and bounded transmission delays, as well as decentralized adaptive control methods for stabilizing nonlinear time-delayed networks. Another important direction is the design of load balancing algorithms that can minimize latency and maximize efficiency in distributed systems. Notable papers in this area include:

• Distributed Gradient Descent Load Balancing, which introduces a probabilistic routing algorithm that converges to an optimal solution even in the presence of network latencies.
• Virtual Contraction Approach to Decentralized Adaptive Stabilization of Nonlinear Time-Delayed Networks, which proposes a decentralized adaptive control method for stabilizing unknown nonlinear time-delayed networks.
• Distributed Optimization with Gradient Tracking over Heterogeneous Delay-Prone Directed Networks, which presents a modified version of the Accelerated Distributed Directed OPTimization algorithm that can solve distributed optimization problems over unidirectional networks with heterogeneous delays.