Naor, Parter, and Yogev (SODA 2020) have recently demonstrated the existence of a \emph{distributed interactive proof} for planarity (i.e., for certifying that a network is planar), using a sophisticated generic technique for constructing distributed IP protocols based on sequential IP protocols. The interactive proof for planarity is based on a distributed certification of the correct execution of any given sequential linear-time algorithm for planarity testing. It involves three interactions between the prover and the randomized distributed verifier (i.e., it is a \dMAM\/ protocol), and uses small certificates, on $O(\log n)$ bits in $n$-node networks. We show that a single interaction from the prover suffices, and randomization is unecessary, by providing an explicit description of a \emph{proof-labeling scheme} for planarity, still using certificates on just $O(\log n)$ bits. We also show that there are no proof-labeling schemes -- in fact, even no \emph{locally checkable proofs} -- for planarity using certificates on $o(\log n)$ bits.
A distributed proof (also known as local certification, or proof-labeling scheme) is a mechanism to certify that the solution to a graph problem is correct. It takes the form of an assignment of labels to the nodes, that can be checked locally. There exists such a proof for the minimum spanning tree problem, using $O(\log n \log W)$ bit labels (where $n$ is the number of nodes in the graph, and $W$ is the largest weight of an edge). This is due to Korman and Kutten who describe it in concise and formal manner in [Korman and Kutten 07]. In this note, we propose a more intuitive description of t…
Distributed certification, whether it be proof-labeling schemes, locally checkable proofs, etc., deals with the issue of certifying the legality of a distributed system with respect to a given boolean predicate. A certificate is assigned to each process in the system by a non-trustable oracle, and the processes are in charge of verifying these certificates, so that two properties are satisfied: completeness, i.e., for every legal instance, there is a certificate assignment leading all processes to accept, and soundness, i.e., for every illegal instance, and for every certificate assignment, at…
Local certification consists in assigning labels to the nodes of a network to certify that some given property is satisfied, in such a way that the labels can be checked locally. In the last few years, certification of graph classes received a considerable attention. The goal is to certify that a graph $G$ belongs to a given graph class~$\mathcal{G}$. Such certifications with labels of size $O(\log n)$ (where $n$ is the size of the network) exist for trees, planar graphs and graphs embedded on surfaces. Feuilloley et al. ask if this can be extended to any class of graphs defined by a finite se…
A Tight Meta-theorem for LOCAL Certification of MSO$_2$ Properties within Bounded Treewidth Graphs
Korteweg-de Vries Institute of Mathematics, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学科特维格-德弗里斯数学研究所）；School of Computing, KAIST（韩国科学技术院计算机学院）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Institute of Informatics, Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics, University of Warsaw（华沙大学数学、信息学和力学学院信息学研究所）
Atomic Commit Problem (ACP) is a single-shot agreement problem similar to consensus, meant to model the properties of transaction commit protocols in fault-prone distributed systems. We argue that ACP is too restrictive to capture the complexities of modern transactional data stores, where commit protocols are integrated with concurrency control, and their executions for different transactions are interdependent. As an alternative, we introduce Transaction Certification Service (TCS), a new formal problem that captures safety guarantees of multi-shot transaction commit protocols with integrate…
Local certification consists in assigning labels (called \emph{certificates}) to the nodes of a network to certify a property of the network or the correctness of a data structure distributed on the network. The verification of this certification must be local: a node typically sees only its neighbors in the network. The main measure of performance of a certification is the size of its certificates. In 2011, Göös and Suomela identified $Θ(\log n)$ as a special certificate size: below this threshold little is possible, and several key properties do have certifications of this type. A certificat…
Naor, Parter, and Yogev [SODA 2020] recently designed a compiler for automatically translating standard centralized interactive protocols to distributed interactive protocols, as introduced by Kol, Oshman, and Saxena [PODC 2018]. In particular, by using this compiler, every linear-time algorithm for deciding the membership to some fixed graph class can be translated into a $\mathsf{dMAM}(O(\log n))$ protocol for this class, that is, a distributed interactive protocol with $O(\log n)$-bit proof size in $n$-node graphs, and three interactions between the (centralizer) computationally-unbounded b…
The graph model checking problem consists in testing whether an input graph satisfies a given logical formula. In this paper, we study this problem in a distributed setting, namely local certification. The goal is to assign labels to the nodes of a network to certify that some given property is satisfied, in such a way that the labels can be checked locally. We first investigate which properties can be locally certified with small certificates. Not surprisingly, this is almost never the case, except for not very expressive logic fragments. Following the steps of Courcelle-Grohe, we then look f…
A proof labelling scheme for a graph class $\mathcal{C}$ is an assignment of certificates to the vertices of any graph in the class $\mathcal{C}$, such that upon reading its certificate and the certificates of its neighbors, every vertex from a graph $G\in \mathcal{C}$ accepts the instance, while if $G\not\in \mathcal{C}$, for every possible assignment of certificates, at least one vertex rejects the instance. It was proved recently that for any fixed surface $Σ$, the class of graphs embeddable in $Σ$ has a proof labelling scheme in which each vertex of an $n$-vertex graph receives a certifica…
Conservatoire national des arts et métiers（法国国立工艺学院）；École Nat. Sup. d’Informatique pour l’Industrie et l’Entreprise (ENSIIE)（国立工业与企业信息高等学院）；UPMC Sorbonne Universités（巴黎第六大学索邦大学联盟）；Institut Universitaire de France（法国大学研究院）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Université Paris-Sud（巴黎第十一大学）
The Minimum Dominating Set (MDS) problem is one of the most fundamental and challenging problems in distributed computing. While it is well-known that minimum dominating sets cannot be approximated locally on general graphs, over the last years, there has been much progress on computing local approximations on sparse graphs, and in particular planar graphs. In this paper we study distributed and deterministic MDS approximation algorithms for graph classes beyond planar graphs. In particular, we show that existing approximation bounds for planar graphs can be lifted to bounded genus graphs, and…
The paper tackles the issue of $\textit{checking}$ that all copies of a large data set replicated at several nodes of a network are identical. The fact that the replicas may be located at distant nodes prevents the system from verifying their equality locally, i.e., by having each node consult only nodes in its vicinity. On the other hand, it remains possible to assign $\textit{certificates}$ to the nodes, so that verifying the consistency of the replicas can be achieved locally. However, we show that, as the data set is large, classical certification mechanisms, including distributed Merlin-A…
Strong and Hiding Distributed Certification of Bipartiteness
Universidad de Chile（智利大学）；Université Paris Cité（巴黎西岱大学）；CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security（CISPA赫尔霍兹信息安全中心）；Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez（阿道夫·伊巴涅斯大学）
This paper is concerned with efficiently coloring sparse graphs in the distributed setting with as few colors as possible. According to the celebrated Four Color Theorem, planar graphs can be colored with at most 4 colors, and the proof gives a (sequential) quadratic algorithm finding such a coloring. A natural problem is to improve this complexity in the distributed setting. Using the fact that planar graphs contain linearly many vertices of degree at most 6, Goldberg, Plotkin, and Shannon obtained a deterministic distributed algorithm coloring $n$-vertex planar graphs with 7 colors in $O(\lo…
We provide a new constant factor approximation algorithm for the (connected) distance-$r$ dominating set problem on graph classes of bounded expansion. Classes of bounded expansion include many familiar classes of sparse graphs such as planar graphs and graphs with excluded (topological) minors, and notably, these classes form the most general subgraph closed classes of graphs for which a sequential constant factor approximation algorithm for the distance-$r$ dominating set problem is currently known. Our algorithm can be implemented in the \congestbc model of distributed computing and uses $\…
We show that the dominating set problem admits a constant factor approximation in a constant number of rounds in the LOCAL model of distributed computing on graph classes with bounded expansion. This generalizes a result of Czygrinow et al. for graphs with excluded topological minors to very general classes of uniformly sparse graphs. We demonstrate how our general algorithm can be modified and fine-tuned to compute an ($11+ε$)-approximation (for any $ε>0)$ of a minimum dominating set on planar graphs. This improves on the previously best known approximation factor of 52 on planar graphs, whic…
We show how to compute a 20-approximation of a minimum dominating set in a planar graph in a constant number of rounds in the LOCAL model of distributed computing. This improves on the previously best known approximation factor of 52, which was achieved by an elegant and simple algorithm of Lenzen et al. Our algorithm combines ideas from the algorithm of Lenzen et al. with recent work of Czygrinow et al. and Kublenz et al. to reduce to the case of bounded degree graphs, where we can simulate a distributed version of the classical greedy algorithm.
We give a distributed algorithm in the {\sf CONGEST} model for property testing of planarity with one-sided error in general (unbounded-degree) graphs. Following Censor-Hillel et al. (DISC 2016), who recently initiated the study of property testing in the distributed setting, our algorithm gives the following guarantee: For a graph $G = (V,E)$ and a distance parameter $ε$, if $G$ is planar, then every node outputs {\sf accept\/}, and if $G$ is $ε$-far from being planar (i.e., more than $ε\cdot |E|$ edges need to be removed in order to make $G$ planar), then with probability $1-1/{\rm poly}(n)$…
A graph $G=(V,E)$ is a geometric intersection graph if every node $v \in V$ is identified with a geometric object of some particular type, and two nodes are adjacent if the corresponding objects intersect. Geometric intersection graph classes have been studied from both the theoretical and practical point of view. On the one hand, many hard problems can be efficiently solved or approximated when the input graph is restricted to a geometric intersection class of graphs. On the other hand, these graphs appear naturally in many applications such as sensor networks, scheduling problems, and others…
