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2010 IEEE 51st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
One Tree Suffices: A Simultaneous O(1)-Approximation for Single-Sink Buy-at-Bulk
Las Vegas, Nevada USA
October 23-October 26
ISBN: 978-0-7695-4244-7
We study the single-sink buy-at-bulk problem with an unknown cost function. We wish to route flow from a set of demand nodes to a root node, where the cost of routing x total flow along an edge is proportional to f(x) for some concave, non-decreasing function f satisfying f(0)=0. We present a simple, fast, combinatorial algorithm that takes a set of demands and constructs a single tree T such that for all f the cost f(T) is a 47.45-approximation of the optimal cost for that f. This is within a factor of 2.33 of the best approximation ratio currently achievable when the tree can be optimized for a specific function. Trees achieving simultaneous O(1)-approximations for all concave functions were previously not known to exist regardless of computation time.
Index Terms:
approximation algorithms, network design, buy-at-bulk
Citation:
Ashish Goel, Ian Post, "One Tree Suffices: A Simultaneous O(1)-Approximation for Single-Sink Buy-at-Bulk," focs, pp.593-600, 2010 IEEE 51st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, 2010
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