Introduction A natural and well-studied problem in algorithmic graph theory and network optimization is that of computing a "shortest path" between two nodes, s and t, in a graph whose edges have "weights" associated with them, and we consider the "length" of a path to be the sum of the weights of the edges that comprise it. Efficient algorithms are well known for this problem, as briefly summarized below. The shortest path problem takes on a new dimension when considered in a geometric domain. In contrast to graphs, where the encoding of edges is explicit, a geometric instance of a shortest path problem is usually specified by giving geometric objects that implicitly encode the graph and its edge weights. Our goal in devising efficient geometric algorithms is generally to avoid explicit construction of the entire underlying graph, since the full induced graph may be very large (even exponential in the input size, or infinite). Computing an optimal

We introduce a simple network design game that models how independent selfish agents can build or maintain a large network. In our game every agent has a specific connectivity requirement, i.e. each agent has a set of terminals and wants to build a network in which his terminals are connected. Possible edges in the network have costs and each agent’s goal is to pay as little as possible. Determining whether or not a Nash equilibrium exists in this game is NP-complete. However, when the goal of each player is to connect a terminal to a common source, we prove that there is a Nash equilibrium as cheap as the optimal network, and give a polynomial time algorithm to find a (1 + ε)-approximate Nash equilibrium that does not cost much more. For the general connection game we prove that there is a 3-approximate Nash equilibrium that is as cheap as the optimal network, and give an algorithm to find a (4.65 + ε)-approximate Nash equilibrium that does not cost much more.

The group Steiner tree problem is a generalization of the Steiner tree problem where we ae given several subsets (groups) of vertices in a weighted graph, and the goal is to find a minimum-weight connected subgraph containing at least one vertex from each group. The problem was introduced by Reich and Widmayer and finds applications in VLSI design. The group Steiner tree problem generalizes the set covering problem, and is therefore at least as had. We give a randomized O(log 3 n log k)-approximation algorithm for the group Steiner tree problem on an n-node graph, where k is the number of groups. The best previous ink)v/ (Bateman, Helvig, performance guarantee was (1 + - Robins and Zelikovsky).

In this paper, we consider the problem of compressing graphs of the link structure of the World Wide Web. We provide efficient algorithms for such compression that are motivated by recently proposed random graph models for describing the Web.

We present decentralized algorithms that compute minimum-cost subgraphs for establishing multicast connections in networks that use coding. These algorithms, coupled with existing decentralized schemes for constructing network codes, constitute a fully decentralized approach for achieving minimum-cost multicast. Our approach is in sharp contrast to the prevailing approach based on approximation algorithms for the directed Steiner tree problem, which is suboptimal and generally assumes centralized computation with full network knowledge. We also give extensions beyond the basic problem of fixed-rate multicast in networks with directed point-to-point links, and consider the problem of minimum-energy multicast in wireless networks as well as the case of a concave utility function at the sender.

We consider the problem of establishing minimum-cost multicast connections over coded packet networks, i.e., packet networks where the contents of outgoing packets are arbitrary, causal functions of the contents of received packets. We consider both wireline and wireless packet networks as well as both static multicast (where membership of the multicast group remains constant for the duration of the connection) and dynamic multicast (where membership of the multicast group changes in time, with nodes joining and leaving the group). For static multicast, we reduce the problem to a polynomial-time solvable optimization problem, ... and we present decentralized algorithms for solving it. These algorithms, when coupled with existing decentralized schemes for constructing network codes, yield a fully decentralized approach for achieving minimum-cost multicast. By contrast, establishing minimum-cost static multicast connections over routed packet networks is a very difficult problem even using centralized computation, except in the special cases of unicast and broadcast connections. For dynamic multicast, we reduce the problem to a dynamic programming problem and apply the theory of dynamic programming to suggest how it may be solved.

Most optimization problems on an undirected graph reduce in complexity when restricted to instances on a tree. A recent result [3] for probabilistically approximating graph metrics by trees such that no edge stretches (in an expected sense) by more than a factor of O(log 2 n) has resulted in several approximation algorithms which exploit the ease of solving problems on trees. The tree construction in [3] is inherently randomized and a natural question to ask is whether approximation algorithms which use this construction can be derandomized. We present a general framework for derandomizing approximation algorithms which use the above tree construction as a primitive. Let \Pi be a graph optimization problem which can be expressed as an integer program with 0-1 variables ¯ x(e) for each edge and with an objective function expressible as...

We consider applying network coding in settings where there is a cost associated with network use.

Various approaches for keyword proximity search have been implemented in relational databases, XML and the Web. Yet, in all of them, an answer is a Q-fragment, namely, a subtree T of the given data graph G, such that T contains all the keywords of the query Q and has no proper subtree with this property. The rank of an answer is inversely proportional to its weight. Three problems are of interest: finding an optimal (i.e., top-ranked) answer, computing the top-k answers and enumerating all the answers in ranked order. It is shown that, under data complexity, an efficient algorithm for solving the first problem is sufficient for solving the other two problems with polynomial delay. Similarly, an efficient algorithm for finding a θ-approximation of the optimal answer suffices for carrying out the following two tasks with polynomial delay, under query-and-data complexity. First, enumerating in a (θ + 1)-approximate order. Second, computing a (θ + 1)-approximation of the top-k answers. As a corollary, this paper gives the first efficient algorithms, under data complexity, for enumerating all the answers in ranked order and for computing the top-k answers. It also gives the first efficient algorithms, under query-and-data complexity, for enumerating in a provably approximate order and for computing an approximation of the top-k answers.

We study the following network design problem: Given a communication network, find a minimum cost subset of missing links such that adding these links to the network makes every pair of points within distance at most d from each other. The problem has been studied earlier [17] under the assumption that all link costs as well as link lengths are identical, and was shown to be \Omega\Gamma/29 n)-hard for every d 4. We present a novel linear programming based approach to obtain an O(log n log d) approximation algorithm for the case of uniform link lengths and costs. We also extend the \Omega\Gammae/1 n) hardness to d 2 f2; 3g. On the other hand, if link costs can vary, we show that the problem is \Omega\Gamma/ log 1\Gammaffl n )-hard for d 3. This version of our problem can be viewed as a special case of the minimum cost d-spanner problem and thus our hardness result applies there as well. For d = 2, however, we show that the problem continues to be O(log n) approximable by giving a...