Masked Interval Routing: a New Routing Scheme

We introduce the new Masked Interval Routing Scheme, MIRS for short, where a maskis added to each interval to indicate particular subsets of "consecutive" labels. Interval routing becomes more flexible, with the classical IRS scheme being a special case of MIRS. We then take two directions. First we show that the interval information stored in the network may be drastically reduced in the hard cases, proving that in globe graphs of O(n^2) vertices the number of intervals per edge goes down from Omega(n) to O(log n). The technique is then extended to globe graphs of arbitrary dimensions. Second we show that MIRS may be advantageously used in fault-tolerant networks, proving that optimal routing with one interval per edge is still possible in hypercubes with a "harmless" subset of faulty vertices. This work is aimed to introducing a new technique. Further research is needed in both the directions taken here. Still, the examples provided show that MIRS may be useful in practical applications.