Distributed Monitoring of Network Properties: The Power of Hybrid Networks

We initiate the study of network monitoring algorithms in a class of hybrid networks in which the nodes are connected by an external network and an internal network (as a short form for externally and internally controlled network). While the external network lies outside of the control of the nodes (or in our case, the monitoring protocol running in them) and might be exposed to continuous changes, the internal network is fully under the control of the nodes. As an example, consider a group of users with mobile devices having access to the cell phone infrastructure. While the network formed by the WiFi connections of the devices is an external network (as its structure is not necessarily under the control of the monitoring protocol), the connections between the devices via the cell phone infrastructure represent an internal network (as it can be controlled by the monitoring protocol). Our goal is to continuously monitor properties of the external network with the help of the internal network. We present scalable distributed algorithms that efficiently monitor the number of edges, the average node degree, the clustering coefficient, the bipartiteness, and the weight of a minimum spanning tree. Their performance bounds demonstrate that monitoring the external network state with the help of an internal network can be done much more efficiently than just using the external network, as is usually done in the literature.