In this work, we study the fundamental naming and counting problems (and some variations) in networks that are anonymous, unknown, and possibly dynamic. In counting, nodes must determine the size of the network n and in naming they must end up with unique identities. By anonymous we mean that all nodes begin from identical states apart possibly from a unique leader node and by unknown that nodes have no a priori knowledge of the network (apart from some minimal knowledge when necessary) including ignorance of n. Network dynamicity is modeled by the 1-interval connectivity model, in which communication is synchronous and a worst-case adversary chooses the edges of every round subject to the condition that each instance is connected. We first focus on static networks with broadcast where we prove that, without a leader, counting is impossible to solve and that naming is impossible to solve even with a leader and even if nodes know n. These impossibilities carry over to dynamic networks as well. We also show that a unique leader suffices in order to solve counting in linear time. Then we focus on dynamic networks with broadcast. We conjecture that dynamicity renders nontrivial computation impossible. In view of this, we let the nodes know an upper bound on the maximum degree that will ever appear and show that in this case the nodes can obtain an upper bound on n. Finally, we replace broadcast with one-to-each, in which a node may send a different message to each of its neighbors. Interestingly, this natural variation is proved to be computationally equivalent to a full-knowledge model, in which unique names exist and the size of the network is known.
Distributed systems with worst-case dynamicity were first studied in @cite_19 . Their outstanding novelty was to assume a communication network that may change arbitrarily from time to time subject to the condition that each instance of the network is connected. They studied asynchronous communication and allowed nodes detect local neighborhood changes. They studied the and problems in this setting and among others provided a uniform protocol for flooding that terminates in @math rounds using @math bit storage and message overhead, where @math is the maximum time it takes to transmit a message.
@cite_19
2120957127
We investigate to what extent flooding and routing is possible if the graph is allowed to change unpredictably at each time step. We study what minimal requirements are necessary so that a node may correctly flood or route a message in a network whose links may change arbitrarily at any given point, subject to the condition that the underlying graph is connected. We look at algorithmic constraints such as limited storage, no knowledge of an upper bound on the number of nodes, and no usage of identifiers. We look at flooding as well as routing to some existing specified destination and give algorithms.