A Strong LP Formulation for the Ring Loading Problem with Integer Demand Splitting

In this paper, we consider the Ring Loading Problem with integer demand splitting (RLP). The problem is given with a ring network, in which a required traffic requirement between each selected node pair must be routed on it. Each traffic requirement can be routed in both directions on the ring network while splitting each traffic requirement in two directions only by integer is allowed. The problem is to find an optimal routing of each traffic requirement which minimizes the capacity requirement. Here, the capacity requirement is defined as the maximum of traffic loads imposed on each link on the network. We formulate the problem as an integer program. By characterizing every extreme point solution to the LP relaxation of the formulation, we show that the optimal objective value of the LP relaxation is equal to p or p+0.5, where p is a nonnegative integer. We also show that the difference between the optimal objective value of RLP and that of the LP relaxation is at most 1. Therefore, we can verify that the optimal objective value of RLP is p+1 if that of the LP relaxation is p+0.5. On the other hand, we present a strengthened LP with size polynomially bounded by the input size, which provides enough information to determine if the optimal objective value of RLP is p or p+1.