Tight Bounds for Maximal Identifiability of Failure Nodes in Boolean Network Tomography

We study maximal identifiability, a measure recently introduced in Boolean Network Tomography to characterize networks' capability to localize failure nodes in end-to-end path measurements. We prove tight upper and lower bounds on the maximal identifiability of failure nodes for specific classes of network topologies, such as trees and $d$-dimensional grids, in both directed and undirected cases. We prove that directed $d$-dimensional grids with support $n$ have maximal identifiability $d$ using $2d(n-1)+2$ monitors; and in the undirected case we show that $2d$ monitors suffice to get identifiability of $d-1$. We then study identifiability under embeddings: we establish relations between maximal identifiability, embeddability and graph dimension when network topologies are model as DAGs. Our results suggest the design of networks over $N$ nodes with maximal identifiability $\Omega(\log N)$ using $O(\log N)$ monitors and a heuristic to boost maximal identifiability on a given network by simulating $d$-dimensional grids. We provide positive evidence of this heuristic through data extracted by exact computation of maximal identifiability on examples of small real networks

A Unified approach to concurrent and parallel algorithms on balanced data structures

Concurrent and parallel algorithms are different. However, in the case of dictionaries, both kinds of algorithms share many common points. We present a unified approach emphasizing these points. It is based on a careful analysis of the sequential algorithm, extracting from it the more basic facts, encapsulated later on as local rules. We apply the method to the insertion algorithms in AVL trees. All the concurrent and parallel insertion algorithms have two main phases. A percolation phase, moving the keys to be inserted down, and a rebalancing phase. Finally, some other algorithms and balanced structures are discussed.Postprint (published version

Architectural Considerations for a Self-Configuring Routing Scheme for Spontaneous Networks

Decoupling the permanent identifier of a node from the node's topology-dependent address is a promising approach toward completely scalable self-organizing networks. A group of proposals that have adopted such an approach use the same structure to: address nodes, perform routing, and implement location service. In this way, the consistency of the routing protocol relies on the coherent sharing of the addressing space among all nodes in the network. Such proposals use a logical tree-like structure where routes in this space correspond to routes in the physical level. The advantage of tree-like spaces is that it allows for simple address assignment and management. Nevertheless, it has low route selection flexibility, which results in low routing performance and poor resilience to failures. In this paper, we propose to increase the number of paths using incomplete hypercubes. The design of more complex structures, like multi-dimensional Cartesian spaces, improves the resilience and routing performance due to the flexibility in route selection. We present a framework for using hypercubes to implement indirect routing. This framework allows to give a solution adapted to the dynamics of the network, providing a proactive and reactive routing protocols, our major contributions. We show that, contrary to traditional approaches, our proposal supports more dynamic networks and is more robust to node failures

Route Planning in Transportation Networks

We survey recent advances in algorithms for route planning in transportation networks. For road networks, we show that one can compute driving directions in milliseconds or less even at continental scale. A variety of techniques provide different trade-offs between preprocessing effort, space requirements, and query time. Some algorithms can answer queries in a fraction of a microsecond, while others can deal efficiently with real-time traffic. Journey planning on public transportation systems, although conceptually similar, is a significantly harder problem due to its inherent time-dependent and multicriteria nature. Although exact algorithms are fast enough for interactive queries on metropolitan transit systems, dealing with continent-sized instances requires simplifications or heavy preprocessing. The multimodal route planning problem, which seeks journeys combining schedule-based transportation (buses, trains) with unrestricted modes (walking, driving), is even harder, relying on approximate solutions even for metropolitan inputs.Comment: This is an updated version of the technical report MSR-TR-2014-4, previously published by Microsoft Research. This work was mostly done while the authors Daniel Delling, Andrew Goldberg, and Renato F. Werneck were at Microsoft Research Silicon Valle