We study the reachability problem for communicating timed processes, both in
discrete and dense time. Our model comprises automata with local timing
constraints communicating over unbounded FIFO channels. Each automaton can only
access its set of local clocks; all clocks evolve at the same rate. Our main
contribution is a complete characterization of decidable and undecidable
communication topologies, for both discrete and dense time. We also obtain
complexity results, by showing that communicating timed processes are at least
as hard as Petri nets; in the discrete time, we also show equivalence with
Petri nets. Our results follow from mutual topology-preserving reductions
between timed automata and (untimed) counter automata.Comment: Extended versio