Efficient Load-Balancing through Distributed Token Dropping

Abstract

We introduce a new graph problem, the token dropping game, and we show how to solve it efficiently in a distributed setting. We use the token dropping game as a tool to design an efficient distributed algorithm for stable orientations and more generally for locally optimal semi-matchings. The prior work by Czygrinow et al. (DISC 2012) finds a stable orientation in $O({\Delta }^5)$ rounds in graphs of maximum degree $\Delta$, while we improve it to $O({\Delta }^4)$ and also prove a lower bound of $\Omega (\Delta )$.

19 pages, 3 figures, revised version