Sense of direction in distributed computing

Sense of direction is a property of labeled graphs which has been shown to have a definite impact on computability and complexity in systems of communicating entities, and whose applicability ranges from the analysis of graph classes to distributed object systems. The full consequences of this property are still not known; in fact, the ongoing investigations continue to bring new (often surprising) results, to establish unsuspected links with other research and/or application areas, and to pose more questions than they answer. The aim of this paper is to provide a view of the current status of research, describing some of the relevant results, and providing pointers to future research directions.