Distinguishing Views in Symmetric Networks: A Tight Lower Bound

The view of a node in a port-labeled network is an infinite tree encoding all walks in the network originating from this node. We prove that for any integers $n\geq D\geq 1$, there exists a port-labeled network with at most $n$ nodes and diameter at most $D$ which contains a pair of nodes whose (infinite) views are different, but whose views truncated to depth $\Omega(D\log (n/D))$ are identical

Symmetries and sense of direction in labeled graphs

AbstractWe consider edge-labeled graphs which model distributed systems, focus on properties of edge-labelings, and study their impact on graph classes. In particular, we investigate the relation between symmetries, topologies and sense of direction. We study symmetries based on the notion of view and of surrounding, and characterize the corresponding graph classes. Among other results, we show that the completely surrounding symmetric labeled graphs coincides with the class of Cayley graphs with Cayley labelings. We then focus on the relationship between symmetries and sense of direction in regular graphs. We characterize the class of regular labeled graphs with minimal symmetric sense of direction, as well as the class of those with group-based sense of direction

Weak models of distributed computing, with connections to modal logic

This work presents a classification of weak models of distributed computing. We focus on deterministic distributed algorithms, and we study models of computing that are weaker versions of the widely-studied port-numbering model. In the port-numbering model, a node of degree d receives messages through d input ports and it sends messages through d output ports, both numbered with 1, 2,..., d. In this work, VVc is the class of all graph problems that can be solved in the standard port-numbering model. We study the following subclasses of VVc: VV: Input port i and output port i are not necessarily connected to the same neighbour. MV: Input ports are not numbered; algorithms receive a multiset of messages. SV: Input ports are not numbered; algorithms receive a set of messages. VB: Output ports are not numbered; algorithms send the same message to all output ports. MB: Combination of MV and VB. SB: Combination of SV and VB. Now we have many trivial containment relations, such as SB ⊆ MB ⊆ VB ⊆ VV ⊆ VVc, but it is not obvious if, e.g., either of VB ⊆ SV or SV ⊆ VB should hold. Nevertheless, it turns out that we can identify a linear order on these classes. We prove that SB � MB = VB � SV = MV = VV � VVc. The same holds for the constant-time versions of these classes. We also show that the constant-time variants of these classes can be characterised by a corresponding modal logic. Hence the linear order identified in this work has direct implications in the study of the expressibility of modal logic. Conversely, we can use tools from modal logic to study these classes

Computing on Anonymous Networks with Sense of Direction

Sense of direction refers to a set of global consistency constraints of the local labeling of the edges of a network. Sense of direction has a large impact on the communication complexity of many distributed problems. In this paper, we study the impact that sense of direction has on computability and we focus on anonymous networks. We establish several results. In particular, we prove that with weak sense of direction, the intuitive knowledge-computability hierarchy between levels of a priori structural knowledge collapses. A powerful implication is the formal proof that shortest path routing is possible in anonymous networks with sense of direction. We prove that weak sense of direction is computationally stronger than topological awareness. We also consider several fundamental problems; for each, we provide a complete characterization of the anonymous networks on which it is computable with sense of direction. 1 Introduction A distributed system is a collection of autonomous entitie..