2016/11/28 by Amiri, Saeed Akhoondian, Dudycz, Szymon, Schmid, Stefan +1
#Combinatorics (math.CO) #Computational Complexity (cs.CC) #Data Structures and Algorithms (cs.DS) #Discrete Mathematics (cs.DM) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Mathematics #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1611.09296
Changing a given configuration in a graph into another one is known as a re- configuration problem. Such problems have recently received much interest in the context of algorithmic graph theory. We initiate the theoretical study of the following reconfiguration problem: How to reroute k unsplittable flows of a certain demand in a capacitated network from their current paths to their respective new paths, in a congestion-free manner? This problem finds immediate applications, e.g., in traffic engineering in computer networks. We show that the problem is generally NP-hard already for k = 2 flows, which motivates us to study rerouting on a most basic class of flow graphs, namely DAGs. Interestingly, we find that for general k, deciding whether an unsplittable multi-commodity flow rerouting schedule exists, is NP-hard even on DAGs. Both NP-hardness proofs are non-trivial. Our main contribution is a polynomial-time (fixed parameter tractable) algorithm to solve the route update problem for a bounded number of flows on DAGs. At the heart of our algorithm lies a novel decomposition of the flow network that allows us to express and resolve reconfiguration dependencies among flows.