Connectivity oracles for failure prone graphs

Dynamic graph connectivity algorithms have been studied for many years, but typically in the most general possible setting, where the graph can evolve in completely arbitrary ways. In this paper we consider a dynamic subgraph model. We assume there is some fixed, underlying graph that can be preprocessed ahead of time. The graph is subject only to vertices and edges flipping “off” (failing) and “on” (recovering), where queries naturally apply to the subgraph on edges/vertices currently flipped on. This model fits most real world scenarios, where the topology of the graph in question (say a router network or road network) is constantly evolving due to temporary failures but never deviates too far from the ideal failure-free state. We present the first efficient connectivity oracle for graphs susceptible to vertex failures. Given vertices u and v and a set D of d failed vertices, we can determine if there is a path from u to v avoiding D in time polynomial in d log n. Ther...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: STOC
• Authors: Ran Duan, Seth Pettie
• Keywords: Algorithms, Connectivity Oracle, Dynamic Graph Connectivity, STOC 2010, Vertex Failures