The Forwarding Index of Antisymmetric Routings

M. El Haddad1, P. Fragopoulou1, Y. Manoussakis2, R. Saad3
1Ecole Nationale des Sciences Appliquées, BP 1818 Tanger, Morocco
2Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique, Université Paris-Sud Bat. 490-91405, Orsay Cedex, France
340#114 Charles Albanel Street, Gatineau (Quebec) Canada I8Z 1R2

Abstract

Given a connected graph \( G \) with \( n \) vertices, a routing \( R \) is a collection of \( n(n-1) \) paths, one path \( R(x,y) \) for each ordered pair \( x, y \) of vertices. A routing is said to be vertex/edge-antisymmetric if for every pair \( x, y \) of vertices, the paths \( R(x,y) \) and \( R(y,x) \) are internally vertex/edge-disjoint. Compared to other types of routing found in the literature, antisymmetric routing is interesting from a practical point of view because it ensures greater network reliability.

For a given graph \( G \) and routing \( R \), the vertex/edge load of \( G \) with respect to \( R \) is the maximum number of paths passing through any vertex/edge of \( G \). The \emph{vertex/edge-forwarding-index} of a graph is the minimum vertex/edge load taken over all routings. If routing \( R \) is vertex/edge-antisymmetric, we talk about \emph{antisymmetric-indices}.

Several results exist in the literature for the forwarding-indices of graphs. In this paper, we derive upper and lower bounds for the antisymmetric-indices of graphs in terms of their connectivity or minimum degree. These bounds are often the best possible. Whenever this is the case, a network that meets the corresponding bound is described. Several related conjectures are proposed throughout the paper.