16,258 research outputs found
Computing earliest arrival flows with multiple sources
Earliest arrival flows are motivated by applications related to
evacuation. Given a network with capacities and transit times on
the arcs, a subset of source nodes with supplies and a sink node,
the task is to send the given supplies from the sources to the sink
"as quickly as possible". The latter requirement is made more
precise by the earliest arrival property which requires that the
total amount of flow that has arrived at the sink is maximal for all
points in time simultaneously.
It is a classical result from the 1970s that, for the special case
of a single source node, earliest arrival flows do exist and can be
computed by essentially applying the Successive Shortest Path
Algorithm for min-cost flow computations. While it has previously
been observed that an earliest arrival flow still exists for
multiple sources, the problem of computing one efficiently has been
open. We present an exact algorithm for this problem whose running
time is strongly polynomial in the input plus output size of the
problem
Earliest Arrival Flows with Multiple Sources
Earliest arrival flows capture the essence of evacuation planning. Given a network with capacities and transit times on the arcs, a subset of source nodes with supplies and a sink node, the task is to send the given supplies from the sources to the sink "as quickly as possible". The latter requirement is made more precise by the earliest arrival property which requires that the total amount of flow that has arrived at the sink is maximal for all points in time simultaneously. It is a classical result from the 1970s that, for the special case of a single source node, earliest arrival flows do exist and can be computed by essentially applying the Successive Shortest Path Algorithm for min-cost flow computations. While it has previously been observed that an earliest arrival flow still exists for multiple sources, the problem of computing one efficiently has been open for many years. We present an exact algorithm for this problem whose running time is strongly polynomial in the input plus output size of the problem
Selfish Routing on Dynamic Flows
Selfish routing on dynamic flows over time is used to model scenarios that
vary with time in which individual agents act in their best interest. In this
paper we provide a survey of a particular dynamic model, the deterministic
queuing model, and discuss how the model can be adjusted and applied to
different real-life scenarios. We then examine how these adjustments affect the
computability, optimality, and existence of selfish routings.Comment: Oberlin College Computer Science Honors Thesis. Supervisor: Alexa
Sharp, Oberlin Colleg
Graph Orientation and Flows Over Time
Flows over time are used to model many real-world logistic and routing
problems. The networks underlying such problems -- streets, tracks, etc. -- are
inherently undirected and directions are only imposed on them to reduce the
danger of colliding vehicles and similar problems. Thus the question arises,
what influence the orientation of the network has on the network flow over time
problem that is being solved on the oriented network. In the literature, this
is also referred to as the contraflow or lane reversal problem.
We introduce and analyze the price of orientation: How much flow is lost in
any orientation of the network if the time horizon remains fixed? We prove that
there is always an orientation where we can still send of the
flow and this bound is tight. For the special case of networks with a single
source or sink, this fraction is which is again tight. We present
more results of similar flavor and also show non-approximability results for
finding the best orientation for single and multicommodity maximum flows over
time
Throughput Optimal On-Line Algorithms for Advanced Resource Reservation in Ultra High-Speed Networks
Advanced channel reservation is emerging as an important feature of ultra
high-speed networks requiring the transfer of large files. Applications include
scientific data transfers and database backup. In this paper, we present two
new, on-line algorithms for advanced reservation, called BatchAll and BatchLim,
that are guaranteed to achieve optimal throughput performance, based on
multi-commodity flow arguments. Both algorithms are shown to have
polynomial-time complexity and provable bounds on the maximum delay for
1+epsilon bandwidth augmented networks. The BatchLim algorithm returns the
completion time of a connection immediately as a request is placed, but at the
expense of a slightly looser competitive ratio than that of BatchAll. We also
present a simple approach that limits the number of parallel paths used by the
algorithms while provably bounding the maximum reduction factor in the
transmission throughput. We show that, although the number of different paths
can be exponentially large, the actual number of paths needed to approximate
the flow is quite small and proportional to the number of edges in the network.
Simulations for a number of topologies show that, in practice, 3 to 5 parallel
paths are sufficient to achieve close to optimal performance. The performance
of the competitive algorithms are also compared to a greedy benchmark, both
through analysis and simulation.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure
A Stackelberg Strategy for Routing Flow over Time
Routing games are used to to understand the impact of individual users'
decisions on network efficiency. Most prior work on routing games uses a
simplified model of network flow where all flow exists simultaneously, and
users care about either their maximum delay or their total delay. Both of these
measures are surrogates for measuring how long it takes to get all of a user's
traffic through the network. We attempt a more direct study of how competition
affects network efficiency by examining routing games in a flow over time
model. We give an efficiently computable Stackelberg strategy for this model
and show that the competitive equilibrium under this strategy is no worse than
a small constant times the optimal, for two natural measures of optimality
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