Maximum Length-Constrained Flows and Disjoint Paths: Distributed, Deterministic, and Fast

Computing routing schemes that support both high throughput and low latency is one of the core challenges of network optimization. Such routes can be formalized as h-length flows which are defined as flows whose flow paths have length at most h. Many well-studied algorithmic primitives-such as maximal and maximum length-constrained disjoint paths-are special cases of h-length flows. Likewise the optimal h-length flow is a fundamental quantity in network optimization, characterizing, up to poly-log factors, how quickly a network can accomplish numerous distributed primitives. In this work, we give the first efficient algorithms for computing (1 - epsilon)-approximate h-length flows that are nearly "as integral as possible." We give deterministic algorithms that take (O) over tilde (poly(h, 1/epsilon)) parallel time and (O) over tilde (poly(h, 1/epsilon) center dot 2(O) (root log n)) distributed CONGEST time. We also give a CONGEST algorithm that succeeds with high probability and only takes (O) over tilde (poly(h, 1/epsilon)) time. Using our h-length flow algorithms, we give the first efficient deterministic CONGEST algorithms for the maximal disjoint paths problem with length constraints-settling an open question of Chang and Saranurak (FOCS 2020)-as well as essentially-optimal parallel and distributed approximation algorithms for maximum length-constrained disjoint paths. The former greatly simplifies deterministic CONGEST algorithms for computing expander decompositions. We also use our techniques to give the first efficient and deterministic (1-epsilon)-approximation algorithms for bipartite b-matching in CONGEST. Lastly, using our flow algorithms, we give the first algorithms to efficiently compute h-length cutmatches, an object at the heart of recent advances in length-constrained expander decompositions.