Improved Algorithms for Scheduling Unsplittable Flows on Paths

In this paper, we investigate offline and online algorithms for Round-UFPP, the problem of minimizing the number of rounds required to schedule a set of unsplittable flows of non-uniform sizes on a given path with non-uniform edge capacities. Round-UFPP is NP-hard and constant-factor approximation algorithms are known under the no bottleneck assumption (NBA), which stipulates that maximum size of a flow is at most the minimum edge capacity. We study Round-UFPP without the NBA, and present improved online and offline algorithms. We first study offline Round-UFPP for a restricted class of instances called alpha-small, where the size of each flow is at most alpha times the capacity of its bottleneck edge, and present an O(log(1/(1 - alpha)))-approximation algorithm. Our main result is an online O(log log cmax)-competitive algorithm for Round-UFPP for general instances, where cmax is the largest edge capacities, improving upon the previous best bound of O(log cmax) due to [16]. Our result leads to an offline O(min(log n, log m, log log cmax))- approximation algorithm and an online O(min(log m, log log cmax))-competitive algorithm for Round-UFPP, where n is the number of flows and m is the number of edges

Designing Overlapping Networks for Publish-Subscribe Systems

From the publish-subscribe systems of the early days of the Internet to the recent emergence of Web 3.0 and IoT (Internet of Things), new problems arise in the design of networks centered at producers and consumers of constantly evolving information. In a typical problem, each terminal is a source or sink of information and builds a physical network in the form of a tree or an overlay network in the form of a star rooted at itself. Every pair of pub-sub terminals that need to be coordinated (e.g. the source and sink of an important piece of control information) define an edge in a bipartite demand graph; the solution must ensure that the corresponding networks rooted at the endpoints of each demand edge overlap at some node. This simple overlap constraint, and the requirement that each network is a tree or a star, leads to a variety of new questions on the design of overlapping networks. In this paper, for the general demand case of the problem, we show that a natural LP formulation has a non-constant integrality gap; on the positive side, we present a logarithmic approximation for the general demand case. When the demand graph is complete, however, we design approximation algorithms with small constant performance ratios, irrespective of whether the pub networks and sub networks are required to be trees or stars