The Local Information Cost of Distributed Graph Problems

We introduce the local information cost (LIC), which quantifies the amount of information that nodes in a network need to learn when solving a graph problem. We show that the local information cost presents a natural lower bound on the communication complexity of distributed algorithms. For the synchronous CONGEST $KT_1$ model, where each node has initial knowledge of its neighbors' IDs, we prove that $\Omega(\frac{\text{LIC}_\gamma(P)}{\log\tau \log n})$ bits are required for solving a graph problem $P$ with a $\tau$-round algorithm that errs with probability at most $\gamma$. Our result is the first lower bound that yields a general trade-off between communication and time for graph problems in the CONGEST $KT_1$ model. We demonstrate how to apply the local information cost by deriving a lower bound on the communication complexity of computing routing tables for all-pairs-shortest-paths (APSP) routing, as well as for computing a spanner with multiplicative stretch $2t-1$ that consists of at most $O(n^{1+\frac{1}{t} + \epsilon})$ edges, where $\epsilon = O( {1}/{t^2} )$. More concretely, we derive the following lower bounds in the CONGEST model under the $KT_1$ assumption: For constructing routing tables, we show that any $O(\text{poly}(n))$-time algorithm has a communication complexity of $\Omega( {n^2}/{\log^2 n} )$ bits. Our main result is for constructing graph spanners: We show that any $O(\text{poly}(n))$-time algorithm must send at least $\tilde\Omega(\tfrac{1}{t^2} n^{1+{1}/{2t}})$ bits. Previously, only a trivial lower bound of $\tilde \Omega(n)$ bits was known for these problems.