Polynomial Time k-Shortest Multi-criteria Prioritized and All-Criteria-Disjoint Paths

Abstract

The shortest secure path (routing) problem in communication networks has to deal with multiple attack layers e.g., man-in-the-middle, eavesdropping, packet injection, packet insertion, etc. Consider different probabilities for each such attack over an edge, probabilities that can differ across edges. Furthermore, a usage of a single shortest paths (for routing) implies possible traffic bottleneck, which should be avoided if possible, which we term pathneck security avoidance. Finding all Pareto–optimal solutions for the multi-criteria single-source single-destination shortest secure path problem with non-negative edge lengths might yield a solution with an exponential number of paths. In the first part of this paper, we study specific settings of the multi-criteria shortest secure path problem, which are based on prioritized multi-criteria and on k-shortest secure paths. In the second part, we show a polynomial-time algorithm that, given an undirected graph G and a pair of vertices (s, t), finds prioritized multi-criteria 2-disjoint (vertex/edge) shortest secure paths between s and t. In the third part of the paper, we introduce the k-disjoint all-criteria-shortest secure paths problem, which is solved in time $$O(\min (k|E|, |E|^{3/2}))$$ .