Online Steiner Forest with Recourse

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Long, Yaowei, Mahabadi, Sepideh, Sarkar, Sherry, Tarnawski, Jakub
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Long, Yaowei
Mahabadi, Sepideh
Sarkar, Sherry
Tarnawski, Jakub
author_facet Long, Yaowei
Mahabadi, Sepideh
Sarkar, Sherry
Tarnawski, Jakub
contents In the online Steiner forest problem we are given a graph $G$, and a sequence of terminal pairs $(u_i,v_i)$ which arrive in an online fashion. We are asked to maintain a low-cost subgraph in which each $u_i$ is connected to $v_i$ for all the pairs that have arrived so far. If we are not allowed to delete edges from our solution, then the best possible competitive ratio is $Θ(\log n)$. In this work, we initiate the study of low-recourse algorithms for online Steiner forest. We give an algorithm that maintains a constant-competitive solution and has an amortized recourse of $O(\log n)$, i.e., inserts and deletes $O(\log n)$ edges per demand on average.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_09821
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Online Steiner Forest with Recourse
Long, Yaowei
Mahabadi, Sepideh
Sarkar, Sherry
Tarnawski, Jakub
Data Structures and Algorithms
In the online Steiner forest problem we are given a graph $G$, and a sequence of terminal pairs $(u_i,v_i)$ which arrive in an online fashion. We are asked to maintain a low-cost subgraph in which each $u_i$ is connected to $v_i$ for all the pairs that have arrived so far. If we are not allowed to delete edges from our solution, then the best possible competitive ratio is $Θ(\log n)$. In this work, we initiate the study of low-recourse algorithms for online Steiner forest. We give an algorithm that maintains a constant-competitive solution and has an amortized recourse of $O(\log n)$, i.e., inserts and deletes $O(\log n)$ edges per demand on average.
title Online Steiner Forest with Recourse
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.09821