When Multiple-Unicast Feasibility Is Equivalent to Single-Sink Routability
Sirui Liu, Zongpeng Li, Baochun Li
In communication networks, network coding allows intermediate nodes to combine messages, achieving transmission rates unattainable by routing alone in many multicast settings. In multiple unicast, where each source sends a message only to its prescribed destination, a central question is under what conditions fractional routing suffices to attain the transmission rates supported by network coding. We prove that, for any given collection of multiple-unicast demands in an undirected network, if the maximum flow between every pair of distinct destinations is at least the total demand rate, then the following are equivalent in feasibility: multiple-unicast coding, multiple-unicast fractional routing, and simultaneous fractional routing of all source rates to any fixed destination. Verifying this pairwise maximum-flow condition and, when it holds, deciding feasibility of the given multiple-unicast demands require at most as many maximum-flow computations as there are destinations. As a direct corollary, we prove the Langberg--Médard conjecture: if a directed network supports coded multicast of independent source messages at a common rate to every destination, then removing arc directions without changing capacities permits simultaneous fractional routing at that rate for all prescribed source--destination pairs.
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