Approximating the single source unsplittable min-cost flow problem

Abstract

In the single source unsplittable min-cost flow problem, commodities must be routed simultaneously from a common source vertex to certain destination vertices in a given graph with edge capacities and costs; the demand of each commodity must be routed along a single path and the total cost must not exceed a given budget. This problem has been introduced by Kleinberg and generalizes several NP-complete problems from various areas in combinatorial optimization such as packing, partitioning, scheduling, load balancing and virtual-circuit routing.