167 research outputs found
Epidemic Thresholds with External Agents
We study the effect of external infection sources on phase transitions in
epidemic processes. In particular, we consider an epidemic spreading on a
network via the SIS/SIR dynamics, which in addition is aided by external agents
- sources unconstrained by the graph, but possessing a limited infection rate
or virulence. Such a model captures many existing models of externally aided
epidemics, and finds use in many settings - epidemiology, marketing and
advertising, network robustness, etc. We provide a detailed characterization of
the impact of external agents on epidemic thresholds. In particular, for the
SIS model, we show that any external infection strategy with constant virulence
either fails to significantly affect the lifetime of an epidemic, or at best,
sustains the epidemic for a lifetime which is polynomial in the number of
nodes. On the other hand, a random external-infection strategy, with rate
increasing linearly in the number of infected nodes, succeeds under some
conditions to sustain an exponential epidemic lifetime. We obtain similar sharp
thresholds for the SIR model, and discuss the relevance of our results in a
variety of settings.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures (to appear in INFOCOM 2014
Towards a Queueing-Based Framework for In-Network Function Computation
We seek to develop network algorithms for function computation in sensor
networks. Specifically, we want dynamic joint aggregation, routing, and
scheduling algorithms that have analytically provable performance benefits due
to in-network computation as compared to simple data forwarding. To this end,
we define a class of functions, the Fully-Multiplexible functions, which
includes several functions such as parity, MAX, and k th -order statistics. For
such functions we exactly characterize the maximum achievable refresh rate of
the network in terms of an underlying graph primitive, the min-mincut. In
acyclic wireline networks, we show that the maximum refresh rate is achievable
by a simple algorithm that is dynamic, distributed, and only dependent on local
information. In the case of wireless networks, we provide a MaxWeight-like
algorithm with dynamic flow splitting, which is shown to be throughput-optimal
Scheduling Storms and Streams in the Cloud
Motivated by emerging big streaming data processing paradigms (e.g., Twitter
Storm, Streaming MapReduce), we investigate the problem of scheduling graphs
over a large cluster of servers. Each graph is a job, where nodes represent
compute tasks and edges indicate data-flows between these compute tasks. Jobs
(graphs) arrive randomly over time, and upon completion, leave the system. When
a job arrives, the scheduler needs to partition the graph and distribute it
over the servers to satisfy load balancing and cost considerations.
Specifically, neighboring compute tasks in the graph that are mapped to
different servers incur load on the network; thus a mapping of the jobs among
the servers incurs a cost that is proportional to the number of "broken edges".
We propose a low complexity randomized scheduling algorithm that, without
service preemptions, stabilizes the system with graph arrivals/departures; more
importantly, it allows a smooth trade-off between minimizing average
partitioning cost and average queue lengths. Interestingly, to avoid service
preemptions, our approach does not rely on a Gibbs sampler; instead, we show
that the corresponding limiting invariant measure has an interpretation
stemming from a loss system.Comment: 14 page
The Behavior of Epidemics under Bounded Susceptibility
We investigate the sensitivity of epidemic behavior to a bounded
susceptibility constraint -- susceptible nodes are infected by their neighbors
via the regular SI/SIS dynamics, but subject to a cap on the infection rate.
Such a constraint is motivated by modern social networks, wherein messages are
broadcast to all neighbors, but attention spans are limited. Bounded
susceptibility also arises in distributed computing applications with download
bandwidth constraints, and in human epidemics under quarantine policies.
Network epidemics have been extensively studied in literature; prior work
characterizes the graph structures required to ensure fast spreading under the
SI dynamics, and long lifetime under the SIS dynamics. In particular, these
conditions turn out to be meaningful for two classes of networks of practical
relevance -- dense, uniform (i.e., clique-like) graphs, and sparse, structured
(i.e., star-like) graphs. We show that bounded susceptibility has a surprising
impact on epidemic behavior in these graph families. For the SI dynamics,
bounded susceptibility has no effect on star-like networks, but dramatically
alters the spreading time in clique-like networks. In contrast, for the SIS
dynamics, clique-like networks are unaffected, but star-like networks exhibit a
sharp change in extinction times under bounded susceptibility.
Our findings are useful for the design of disease-resistant networks and
infrastructure networks. More generally, they show that results for existing
epidemic models are sensitive to modeling assumptions in non-intuitive ways,
and suggest caution in directly using these as guidelines for real systems
On the Role of Mobility for Multi-message Gossip
We consider information dissemination in a large -user wireless network in
which users wish to share a unique message with all other users. Each of
the users only has knowledge of its own contents and state information;
this corresponds to a one-sided push-only scenario. The goal is to disseminate
all messages efficiently, hopefully achieving an order-optimal spreading rate
over unicast wireless random networks. First, we show that a random-push
strategy -- where a user sends its own or a received packet at random -- is
order-wise suboptimal in a random geometric graph: specifically,
times slower than optimal spreading. It is known that this
gap can be closed if each user has "full" mobility, since this effectively
creates a complete graph. We instead consider velocity-constrained mobility
where at each time slot the user moves locally using a discrete random walk
with velocity that is much lower than full mobility. We propose a simple
two-stage dissemination strategy that alternates between individual message
flooding ("self promotion") and random gossiping. We prove that this scheme
achieves a close to optimal spreading rate (within only a logarithmic gap) as
long as the velocity is at least . The key
insight is that the mixing property introduced by the partial mobility helps
users to spread in space within a relatively short period compared to the
optimal spreading time, which macroscopically mimics message dissemination over
a complete graph.Comment: accepted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 201
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