COVER LETTER FOR SUBMISSION OF NEW MANUSCRIPTS
To,
The Editor-in-Chief,
Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing.
Dear Editor-in-Chief,
I am enclosing herewith a manuscript entitled “Efficient Random Walk Sampling in
Distributed Networks” submitted to “Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing” for
possible evaluation. The necessary information are given below:


Authors' Names and Affiliations:
I.
Atish Das Sarma, eBay Research Labs, eBay Inc., atish.dassarma@gmail.com, 1678-557-1483.
II.
Anisur Rahaman Molla, Division of Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore 637371, anisurpm@gmail.com.
III.
Gopal Pandurangan, Division of Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore 637371 and Department of Computer Science, Brown
University, Providence, RI 02912, USA, gopalpandurangan@gmail.com.
Problem Statement: In this manuscript, we consider the problem of performing random
walk sampling efficiently in a distributed network. Given bandwidth constraints, the goal
is to minimize the number of rounds and messages required to obtain several random
walk samples in a continuous online fashion.

Brief Description of the Approach: We show how several random walks can be
performed continuously (when source nodes are provided only at runtime, i.e., online),
such that each walk of length L can be performed exactly in just O(\sqrt{LD}) rounds,
where D is the diameter of the network, and O(L) messages. The high level idea of our
approach is: first perform many short random walks from each node in parallel and then
stitch them to get the desired long length random walk.

List of Contribution:
o We introduce the problem of continuous processing of random walks. The
objective is for a network to support a continuous sequence of random walk
requests from various source nodes and perform node sampling to minimize
round and message complexity for each request.
o We present the first algorithm that is efficient in both round complexity and
message complexity. Our technique and analysis presents almost-tight bounds
on the message and round complexity in a widely used network congestion
model.
o We perform comprehensive experimental evaluation on numerous topological
networks and highlight the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithm. The
experimental results corroborate the theoretical contributions and show that
our random walk sampling algorithm performs very well on various metrics for
all parameter ranges.
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Similar Paper published in Journal or Conferences: We like to mention that (with the
best of our knowledge) this is the first paper considering the problem of continuous
processing of random walk samples in distributed computing model.

Closest Article(s) on which Our Work Build:
o A. Das Sarma, D. Nanongkai, G. Pandurangan, and P. Tetali. Distributed random
walks. J. ACM, 60(1):2, 2013. (A combined article of the two conference paper
published in PODC 2009 and PODC 2010. PODC-- Symposium on Principles of
Distributed Computing).

List of Experts Covering These Areas and Fields:
o David Peleg, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Applied
Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science, david.peleg@weizmann.ac.il
o Danupon Nanongkai, Postdoc Researcher, ICERM, Brown University,
danupon@gmail.com
o Chen Avin, Professor, Communication Systems Engineering Department, Ben
Gurion University of the Negev, avin@cse.bgu.sc.il
o Maleq Khan, Researcher, Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory,
Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, maleq@vbi.vt.edu

Technical Areas or Keywords:
o The technical details related on random walks and the probabilistic analysis e.g.,
Chernoff bound, Coupon collector problem etc. The keywords are: Random
walks; Random sampling; Decentralized computation; Distributed algorithms;
Self-aware network.
Please contact me if you need any further information. Thank you for your time and
consideration.
Sincerely,
Anisur Rahaman molla
Pillar of Information Systems Technology and Design
Singapore University of Technology and Design
20 Dover Drive
Singapore 138682
Mobile: (+65) 85103860, Email: anisurpm@gmail.com
WWW: https://sites.google.com/site/mollaanisurrahaman