GIT-CERCS-04-05
Arnab Paul, Rahul Ray, Umakishore Ramachandran,
Trading Processor Cycles for Communication
"Trade computation for communication whenever possible" has been
the conventional wisdom to save bandwidth and power in wireless
domain. We glanced at the merging trends of technology and the
applications, and identified a number of areas where the processor
cycles can be traded for network bandwidth. These areas are - file
transfer, shared document edits, remote authentication, and
verification of remotely available codes. We collect and present
some of the theory-paradigms that have given birth to results
potentially usable towards saving bandwidth at the cost of
computation. We hope to make a case for incorporating the insights
collected in this paper from various fields of complexity theory,
into the design of network protocols for the future. In the
penumbra of this over-arching goal, we also suggest how the engine
of "Probabilistic Checking of Proofs" (PCP) can be used for
remote authentication purposes, resulting in much smaller network
overhead and leading to very efficient usage of bandwidth and
power. Whether this seems to be an interesting route, we then
present the algorithmic challenges that need be solved and argue
why such a theoretical cranking may be just as worth.