Survivable networks,linear programming relaxations and the parsimonious property

We consider the survivable network design problem — the problem of designing, at minimum cost, a network with edge-connectivity requirements. As special cases, this problem encompasses the Steiner tree problem, the traveling salesman problem and thek-edge-connected network design problem. We establish a property, referred to as the parsimonious property, of the linear programming (LP) relaxation of a classical formulation for the problem. The parsimonious property has numerous consequences. For example, we derive various structural properties of these LP relaxations, we present some algorithmic improvements and we perform tight worst-case analyses of two heuristics for the survivable network design problem.The research of both authors was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant ECS-8717970 and the Leaders for manufacturing program at MIT.