33,682 research outputs found
Walking Through Waypoints
We initiate the study of a fundamental combinatorial problem: Given a
capacitated graph , find a shortest walk ("route") from a source to a destination that includes all vertices specified by a set
: the \emph{waypoints}. This waypoint routing problem
finds immediate applications in the context of modern networked distributed
systems. Our main contribution is an exact polynomial-time algorithm for graphs
of bounded treewidth. We also show that if the number of waypoints is
logarithmically bounded, exact polynomial-time algorithms exist even for
general graphs. Our two algorithms provide an almost complete characterization
of what can be solved exactly in polynomial-time: we show that more general
problems (e.g., on grid graphs of maximum degree 3, with slightly more
waypoints) are computationally intractable
Line-distortion, Bandwidth and Path-length of a graph
We investigate the minimum line-distortion and the minimum bandwidth problems
on unweighted graphs and their relations with the minimum length of a
Robertson-Seymour's path-decomposition. The length of a path-decomposition of a
graph is the largest diameter of a bag in the decomposition. The path-length of
a graph is the minimum length over all its path-decompositions. In particular,
we show:
- if a graph can be embedded into the line with distortion , then
admits a Robertson-Seymour's path-decomposition with bags of diameter at most
in ;
- for every class of graphs with path-length bounded by a constant, there
exist an efficient constant-factor approximation algorithm for the minimum
line-distortion problem and an efficient constant-factor approximation
algorithm for the minimum bandwidth problem;
- there is an efficient 2-approximation algorithm for computing the
path-length of an arbitrary graph;
- AT-free graphs and some intersection families of graphs have path-length at
most 2;
- for AT-free graphs, there exist a linear time 8-approximation algorithm for
the minimum line-distortion problem and a linear time 4-approximation algorithm
for the minimum bandwidth problem
On Minimum Average Stretch Spanning Trees in Polygonal 2-trees
A spanning tree of an unweighted graph is a minimum average stretch spanning
tree if it minimizes the ratio of sum of the distances in the tree between the
end vertices of the graph edges and the number of graph edges. We consider the
problem of computing a minimum average stretch spanning tree in polygonal
2-trees, a super class of 2-connected outerplanar graphs. For a polygonal
2-tree on vertices, we present an algorithm to compute a minimum average
stretch spanning tree in time. This algorithm also finds a
minimum fundamental cycle basis in polygonal 2-trees.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure
Charting the Algorithmic Complexity of Waypoint Routing
Modern computer networks support interesting new routing models in which traffic flows from a source sto a destination t can be flexibly steered through a sequence of waypoints, such as (hardware) middleboxes or (virtualized) network functions (VNFs), to create innovative network services like service chains or segment routing. While the benefits and technological challenges of providing such routing models have been articulated and studied intensively over the last years, less is known about the underlying algorithmic traffic routing problems.
The goal of this paper is to provide the network community with an overview of algorithmic techniques for waypoint routing and also inform about limitations due to computational hardness. In particular, we put the waypoint routing problem into perspective with respect to classic graph theoretical problems. For example, we find that while computing a shortest path from a source s to a destination t is simple (e.g., using Dijkstra's algorithm), the problem of finding a shortest route from s to t via a single waypoint already features a deep combinatorial structure.</jats:p
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