99,442 research outputs found
Finding the Median (Obliviously) with Bounded Space
We prove that any oblivious algorithm using space to find the median of a
list of integers from requires time . This bound also applies to the problem of determining whether the median
is odd or even. It is nearly optimal since Chan, following Munro and Raman, has
shown that there is a (randomized) selection algorithm using only
registers, each of which can store an input value or -bit counter,
that makes only passes over the input. The bound also implies
a size lower bound for read-once branching programs computing the low order bit
of the median and implies the analog of for length oblivious branching programs
Gossip in a Smartphone Peer-to-Peer Network
In this paper, we study the fundamental problem of gossip in the mobile
telephone model: a recently introduced variation of the classical telephone
model modified to better describe the local peer-to-peer communication services
implemented in many popular smartphone operating systems. In more detail, the
mobile telephone model differs from the classical telephone model in three
ways: (1) each device can participate in at most one connection per round; (2)
the network topology can undergo a parameterized rate of change; and (3)
devices can advertise a parameterized number of bits about their state to their
neighbors in each round before connection attempts are initiated. We begin by
describing and analyzing new randomized gossip algorithms in this model under
the harsh assumption of a network topology that can change completely in every
round. We prove a significant time complexity gap between the case where nodes
can advertise bits to their neighbors in each round, and the case where
nodes can advertise bit. For the latter assumption, we present two
solutions: the first depends on a shared randomness source, while the second
eliminates this assumption using a pseudorandomness generator we prove to exist
with a novel generalization of a classical result from the study of two-party
communication complexity. We then turn our attention to the easier case where
the topology graph is stable, and describe and analyze a new gossip algorithm
that provides a substantial performance improvement for many parameters. We
conclude by studying a relaxed version of gossip in which it is only necessary
for nodes to each learn a specified fraction of the messages in the system.Comment: Extended Abstract to Appear in the Proceedings of the ACM Conference
on the Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC 2017
End-to-end informed VM selection in compute clouds
The selection of resources, particularly VMs, in current public IaaS clouds is usually done in a blind fashion, as cloud users do not have much information about resource consumption by co-tenant third-party tasks. In particular, communication patterns can play a significant part in cloud application performance and responsiveness, specially in the case of novel latencysensitive applications, increasingly common in today’s clouds. Thus, herein we propose an end-to-end approach to the VM allocation problem using policies based uniquely on round-trip time measurements between VMs. Those become part of a userlevel ‘Recommender Service’ that receives VM allocation requests with certain network-related demands and matches them to a suitable subset of VMs available to the user within the cloud. We propose and implement end-to-end algorithms for VM selection that cover desirable profiles of communications between VMs in distributed applications in a cloud setting, such as profiles with prevailing pair-wise, hub-and-spokes, or clustered communication patterns between constituent VMs. We quantify the expected benefits from deploying our Recommender Service by comparing our informed VM allocation approaches to conventional, random allocation methods, based on real measurements of latencies between Amazon EC2 instances. We also show that our approach is completely independent from cloud architecture details, is adaptable to different types of applications and workloads, and is lightweight and transparent to cloud providers.This work is supported in part by the National Science
Foundation under grant CNS-0963974
Concurrent Knowledge-Extraction in the Public-Key Model
Knowledge extraction is a fundamental notion, modelling machine possession of
values (witnesses) in a computational complexity sense. The notion provides an
essential tool for cryptographic protocol design and analysis, enabling one to
argue about the internal state of protocol players without ever looking at this
supposedly secret state. However, when transactions are concurrent (e.g., over
the Internet) with players possessing public-keys (as is common in
cryptography), assuring that entities ``know'' what they claim to know, where
adversaries may be well coordinated across different transactions, turns out to
be much more subtle and in need of re-examination. Here, we investigate how to
formally treat knowledge possession by parties (with registered public-keys)
interacting over the Internet. Stated more technically, we look into the
relative power of the notion of ``concurrent knowledge-extraction'' (CKE) in
the concurrent zero-knowledge (CZK) bare public-key (BPK) model.Comment: 38 pages, 4 figure
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