299 research outputs found
NextBestOnce: Achieving Polylog Routing despite Non-greedy Embeddings
Social Overlays suffer from high message delivery delays due to insufficient
routing strategies. Limiting connections to device pairs that are owned by
individuals with a mutual trust relationship in real life, they form topologies
restricted to a subgraph of the social network of their users. While
centralized, highly successful social networking services entail a complete
privacy loss of their users, Social Overlays at higher performance represent an
ideal private and censorship-resistant communication substrate for the same
purpose.
Routing in such restricted topologies is facilitated by embedding the social
graph into a metric space. Decentralized routing algorithms have up to date
mainly been analyzed under the assumption of a perfect lattice structure.
However, currently deployed embedding algorithms for privacy-preserving Social
Overlays cannot achieve a sufficiently accurate embedding and hence
conventional routing algorithms fail. Developing Social Overlays with
acceptable performance hence requires better models and enhanced algorithms,
which guarantee convergence in the presence of local optima with regard to the
distance to the target.
We suggest a model for Social Overlays that includes inaccurate embeddings
and arbitrary degree distributions. We further propose NextBestOnce, a routing
algorithm that can achieve polylog routing length despite local optima. We
provide analytical bounds on the performance of NextBestOnce assuming a
scale-free degree distribution, and furthermore show that its performance can
be improved by more than a constant factor when including Neighbor-of-Neighbor
information in the routing decisions.Comment: 23 pages, 2 figure
Fault-Tolerant Spanners: Better and Simpler
A natural requirement of many distributed structures is fault-tolerance:
after some failures, whatever remains from the structure should still be
effective for whatever remains from the network. In this paper we examine
spanners of general graphs that are tolerant to vertex failures, and
significantly improve their dependence on the number of faults , for all
stretch bounds.
For stretch we design a simple transformation that converts every
-spanner construction with at most edges into an -fault-tolerant
-spanner construction with at most edges.
Applying this to standard greedy spanner constructions gives -fault tolerant
-spanners with edges. The previous
construction by Chechik, Langberg, Peleg, and Roddity [STOC 2009] depends
similarly on but exponentially on (approximately like ).
For the case and unit-length edges, an -approximation
algorithm is known from recent work of Dinitz and Krauthgamer [arXiv 2010],
where several spanner results are obtained using a common approach of rounding
a natural flow-based linear programming relaxation. Here we use a different
(stronger) LP relaxation and improve the approximation ratio to ,
which is, notably, independent of the number of faults . We further
strengthen this bound in terms of the maximum degree by using the \Lovasz Local
Lemma.
Finally, we show that most of our constructions are inherently local by
designing equivalent distributed algorithms in the LOCAL model of distributed
computation.Comment: 17 page
Remarks on Category-Based Routing in Social Networks
It is well known that individuals can route messages on short paths through
social networks, given only simple information about the target and using only
local knowledge about the topology. Sociologists conjecture that people find
routes greedily by passing the message to an acquaintance that has more in
common with the target than themselves, e.g. if a dentist in Saarbr\"ucken
wants to send a message to a specific lawyer in Munich, he may forward it to
someone who is a lawyer and/or lives in Munich. Modelling this setting,
Eppstein et al. introduced the notion of category-based routing. The goal is to
assign a set of categories to each node of a graph such that greedy routing is
possible. By proving bounds on the number of categories a node has to be in we
can argue about the plausibility of the underlying sociological model. In this
paper we substantially improve the upper bounds introduced by Eppstein et al.
and prove new lower bounds.Comment: 21 page
Analyzing and Enhancing Routing Protocols for Friend-to-Friend Overlays
The threat of surveillance by governmental and industrial parties is more eminent than ever. As communication moves into the digital domain, the advances in automatic assessment and interpretation of enormous amounts of data enable tracking of millions of people, recording and monitoring their private life with an unprecedented accurateness. The knowledge of such an all-encompassing loss of privacy affects the behavior of individuals, inducing various degrees of (self-)censorship and anxiety. Furthermore, the monopoly of a few large-scale organizations on digital communication enables global censorship and manipulation of public opinion. Thus, the current situation undermines the freedom of speech to a detrimental degree and threatens the foundations of modern society.
Anonymous and censorship-resistant communication systems are hence of utmost importance to circumvent constant surveillance. However, existing systems are highly vulnerable to infiltration and sabotage. In particular, Sybil attacks, i.e., powerful parties inserting a large number of fake identities into the system, enable malicious parties to observe and possibly manipulate a large fraction of the communication within the system. Friend-to-friend (F2F) overlays, which restrict direct communication to parties sharing a real-world trust relationship, are a promising countermeasure to Sybil attacks, since the requirement of establishing real-world trust increases the cost of infiltration drastically. Yet, existing
F2F overlays suffer from a low performance, are vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks, or fail to provide anonymity.
Our first contribution in this thesis is concerned with an in-depth analysis of the concepts underlying the design of state-of-the-art F2F overlays. In the course of this analysis, we first extend the existing evaluation methods considerably, hence providing tools for both our and future research in the area of F2F overlays and distributed systems in general. Based on the novel methodology, we prove that existing approaches are inherently unable to offer acceptable delays without either requiring exhaustive maintenance costs or enabling denial-of-service attacks and de-anonymization.
Consequentially, our second contribution lies in the design and evaluation of a novel concept for F2F overlays based on insights of the prior in-depth analysis. Our previous analysis has revealed that greedy embeddings allow highly efficient communication in arbitrary connectivity-restricted overlays by addressing participants through coordinates and adapting these coordinates to the overlay structure. However, greedy embeddings in their original form reveal the identity of the communicating parties and fail to provide the necessary resilience in the presence of dynamic and possibly malicious users. Therefore, we present a privacy-preserving communication protocol for greedy embeddings based on anonymous return addresses rather than identifying node coordinates. Furthermore, we enhance the communication’s robustness and attack-resistance by using multiple parallel embeddings and alternative algorithms for message delivery. We show that our approach achieves a low communication complexity.
By replacing the coordinates with anonymous addresses, we furthermore provably achieve anonymity in the form of plausible deniability against an internal local adversary. Complementary, our simulation study on real-world data indicates that our approach is highly efficient and effectively mitigates the impact of failures as well as powerful denial-of-service attacks. Our fundamental results open new possibilities for anonymous and censorship-resistant applications.Die Bedrohung der Überwachung durch staatliche oder kommerzielle Stellen ist ein drängendes Problem der modernen Gesellschaft. Heutzutage findet Kommunikation vermehrt über digitale Kanäle statt. Die so verfügbaren Daten über das Kommunikationsverhalten eines Großteils der Bevölkerung in Kombination mit den Möglichkeiten im Bereich der automatisierten Verarbeitung solcher Daten erlauben das großflächige Tracking von Millionen an Personen, deren Privatleben mit noch nie da gewesener Genauigkeit aufgezeichnet und beobachtet werden kann. Das Wissen über diese allumfassende Überwachung verändert das individuelle Verhalten und führt so zu (Selbst-)zensur sowie Ängsten. Des weiteren ermöglicht die Monopolstellung einiger weniger Internetkonzernen globale Zensur und Manipulation der öffentlichen Meinung. Deshalb stellt die momentane Situation eine drastische Einschränkung der Meinungsfreiheit dar und bedroht die Grundfesten der modernen Gesellschaft.
Systeme zur anonymen und zensurresistenten Kommunikation sind daher von ungemeiner Wichtigkeit. Jedoch sind die momentanen System anfällig gegen Sabotage. Insbesondere ermöglichen es Sybil-Angriffe, bei denen ein Angreifer eine große Anzahl an gefälschten Teilnehmern in ein System einschleust und so einen großen Teil der Kommunikation kontrolliert, Kommunikation innerhalb eines solchen Systems zu beobachten und zu manipulieren. F2F Overlays dagegen erlauben nur direkte Kommunikation zwischen Teilnehmern, die eine Vertrauensbeziehung in der realen Welt teilen. Dadurch erschweren F2F Overlays das Eindringen von Angreifern in das System entscheidend und verringern so den Einfluss von Sybil-Angriffen. Allerdings leiden die existierenden F2F Overlays an geringer Leistungsfähigkeit, Anfälligkeit gegen Denial-of-Service Angriffe oder fehlender Anonymität.
Der erste Beitrag dieser Arbeit liegt daher in der fokussierten Analyse der Konzepte, die in den momentanen F2F Overlays zum Einsatz kommen. Im Zuge dieser Arbeit erweitern wir zunächst die existierenden Evaluationsmethoden entscheidend und erarbeiten so Methoden, die Grundlagen für unsere sowie zukünftige Forschung in diesem Bereich bilden. Basierend auf diesen neuen Evaluationsmethoden zeigen wir, dass die existierenden Ansätze grundlegend nicht fähig sind, akzeptable Antwortzeiten bereitzustellen ohne im Zuge dessen enorme Instandhaltungskosten oder Anfälligkeiten gegen Angriffe in Kauf zu nehmen.
Folglich besteht unser zweiter Beitrag in der Entwicklung und Evaluierung eines neuen Konzeptes für F2F Overlays, basierenden auf den Erkenntnissen der vorangehenden Analyse. Insbesondere ergab sich in der vorangehenden Evaluation, dass Greedy Embeddings hoch-effiziente Kommunikation erlauben indem sie Teilnehmer durch Koordinaten adressieren und diese an die Struktur des Overlays anpassen. Jedoch sind Greedy Embeddings in ihrer ursprünglichen Form nicht auf anonyme Kommunikation mit einer dynamischen Teilnehmermengen und potentiellen Angreifern ausgelegt. Daher präsentieren wir ein Privätssphäre-schützenden Kommunikationsprotokoll für F2F Overlays, in dem die identifizierenden Koordinaten durch anonyme Adressen ersetzt werden.
Des weiteren erhöhen wir die Resistenz der Kommunikation durch den Einsatz mehrerer Embeddings und alternativer Algorithmen zum Finden von Routen. Wir beweisen, dass unser Ansatz eine geringe Kommunikationskomplexität im Bezug auf die eigentliche Kommunikation sowie die Instandhaltung des Embeddings aufweist. Ferner zeigt unsere Simulationstudie, dass der Ansatz effiziente Kommunikation mit kurzen Antwortszeiten und geringer Instandhaltungskosten erreicht sowie den Einfluss von Ausfälle und Angriffe erfolgreich abschwächt. Unsere grundlegenden Ergebnisse eröffnen neue Möglichkeiten in der Entwicklung anonymer und zensurresistenter Anwendungen
Dynamics of spectral algorithms for distributed routing
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-117).In the past few decades distributed systems have evolved from man-made machines to organically changing social, economic and protein networks. This transition has been overwhelming in many ways at once. Dynamic, heterogeneous, irregular topologies have taken the place of static, homogeneous, regular ones. Asynchronous, ad hoc peer-to-peer networks have replaced carefully engineered super-computers, governed by globally synchronized clocks. Modern network scales have demanded distributed data structures in place of traditionally centralized ones. While the core problems of routing remain mostly unchanged, the sweeping changes of the computing environment invoke an altogether new science of algorithmic and analytic techniques. It is these techniques that are the focus of the present work. We address the re-design of routing algorithms in three classical domains: multi-commodity routing, broadcast routing and all-pairs route representation. Beyond their practical value, our results make pleasing contributions to Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science. We exploit surprising connections to NP-hard approximation, and we introduce new techniques in metric embeddings and spectral graph theory. The distributed computability of "oblivious routes", a core combinatorial property of every graph and a key ingredient in route engineering, opens interesting questions in the natural and experimental sciences as well. Oblivious routes are "universal" communication pathways in networks which are essentially unique. They are magically robust as their quality degrades smoothly and gracefully with changes in topology or blemishes in the computational processes. While we have only recently learned how to find them algorithmically, their power begs the question whether naturally occurring networks from Biology to Sociology to Economics have their own mechanisms of finding and utilizing these pathways. Our discoveries constitute a significant progress towards the design of a self-organizing Internet, whose infrastructure is fueled entirely by its participants on an equal citizen basis. This grand engineering challenge is believed to be a potential technological solution to a long line of pressing social and human rights issues in the digital age. Some prominent examples include non-censorship, fair bandwidth allocation, privacy and ownership of social data, the right to copy information, non-discrimination based on identity, and many others.by Petar Maymounkov.Ph.D
Near Isometric Terminal Embeddings for Doubling Metrics
Given a metric space (X,d), a set of terminals K subseteq X, and a parameter t >= 1, we consider metric structures (e.g., spanners, distance oracles, embedding into normed spaces) that preserve distances for all pairs in K x X up to a factor of t, and have small size (e.g. number of edges for spanners, dimension for embeddings). While such terminal (aka source-wise) metric structures are known to exist in several settings, no terminal spanner or embedding with distortion close to 1, i.e., t=1+epsilon for some small 0<epsilon<1, is currently known.
Here we devise such terminal metric structures for doubling metrics, and show that essentially any metric structure with distortion 1+epsilon and size s(|X|) has its terminal counterpart, with distortion 1+O(epsilon) and size s(|K|)+1. In particular, for any doubling metric on n points, a set of k=o(n) terminals, and constant 0<epsilon<1, there exists
- A spanner with stretch 1+epsilon for pairs in K x X, with n+o(n) edges.
- A labeling scheme with stretch 1+epsilon for pairs in K x X, with label size ~~ log k.
- An embedding into l_infty^d with distortion 1+epsilon for pairs in K x X, where d=O(log k). Moreover, surprisingly, the last two results apply if only K is a doubling metric, while X can be arbitrary
Hyperbolic Geometry of Complex Networks
We develop a geometric framework to study the structure and function of
complex networks. We assume that hyperbolic geometry underlies these networks,
and we show that with this assumption, heterogeneous degree distributions and
strong clustering in complex networks emerge naturally as simple reflections of
the negative curvature and metric property of the underlying hyperbolic
geometry. Conversely, we show that if a network has some metric structure, and
if the network degree distribution is heterogeneous, then the network has an
effective hyperbolic geometry underneath. We then establish a mapping between
our geometric framework and statistical mechanics of complex networks. This
mapping interprets edges in a network as non-interacting fermions whose
energies are hyperbolic distances between nodes, while the auxiliary fields
coupled to edges are linear functions of these energies or distances. The
geometric network ensemble subsumes the standard configuration model and
classical random graphs as two limiting cases with degenerate geometric
structures. Finally, we show that targeted transport processes without global
topology knowledge, made possible by our geometric framework, are maximally
efficient, according to all efficiency measures, in networks with strongest
heterogeneity and clustering, and that this efficiency is remarkably robust
with respect to even catastrophic disturbances and damages to the network
structure
Light Euclidean Spanners with Steiner Points
The FOCS'19 paper of Le and Solomon, culminating a long line of research on
Euclidean spanners, proves that the lightness (normalized weight) of the greedy
-spanner in is for any
and any (where
hides polylogarithmic factors of ), and also shows the
existence of point sets in for which any -spanner
must have lightness . Given this tight bound on the
lightness, a natural arising question is whether a better lightness bound can
be achieved using Steiner points.
Our first result is a construction of Steiner spanners in with
lightness , where is the spread of the
point set. In the regime of , this provides an
improvement over the lightness bound of Le and Solomon [FOCS 2019]; this regime
of parameters is of practical interest, as point sets arising in real-life
applications (e.g., for various random distributions) have polynomially bounded
spread, while in spanner applications often controls the precision,
and it sometimes needs to be much smaller than . Moreover, for
spread polynomially bounded in , this upper bound provides a
quadratic improvement over the non-Steiner bound of Le and Solomon [FOCS 2019],
We then demonstrate that such a light spanner can be constructed in
time for polynomially bounded spread, where
hides a factor of . Finally, we extend the
construction to higher dimensions, proving a lightness upper bound of
for any and any .Comment: 23 pages, 2 figures, to appear in ESA 2
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