A near-optimal distributed fully dynamic algorithm for maintaining sparse spanners

Currently, there are no known explicit algorithms for the great majority of graph problems in the dynamic distributed message-passing model. Instead, most state-of-the-art dynamic distributed algorithms are constructed by composing a static algorithm for the problem at hand with a simulation technique that converts static algorithms to dynamic ones. We argue that this powerful methodology does not provide satisfactory solutions for many important dynamic distributed problems, and this necessitates developing algorithms for these problems from scratch. In this paper we develop a fully dynamic distributed algorithm for maintaining sparse spanners. Our algorithm improves drastically the quiescence time of the state-of-the-art algorithm for the problem. Moreover, we show that the quiescence time of our algorithm is optimal up to a small constant factor. In addition, our algorithm improves significantly upon the state-of-the-art algorithm in all efficiency parameters, specifically, it has smaller quiescence message and space complexities, and smaller local processing time. Finally, our algorithm is self-contained and fairly simple, and is, consequently, amenable to implementation on unsophisticated network devices.