Private Computation: k-Connected versus 1-Connected Networks

We study the role of connectivity of communication networks in private computations under information theoretical settings in the honest-but-curious model. We show that some functions can be 1-privately computed even if the underlying network is 1-connected but not 2-connected. Then we give a complete characterisation of non-degenerate functions that can be 1-privately computed on non-2-connected networks. Furthermore, we present a technique for simulating 1-private protocols that work on arbitrary (complete) networks on k-connected networks. For this simulation, at most \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$(1 - k/(n - 1)) \cdot L$\end{document} additional random bits are needed, where L is the number of bits exchanged in the original protocol and n is the number of players. Finally, we give matching lower and upper bounds for the number of random bits needed to compute the parity function on k-connected networks 1-privately, namely \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$\lceil (n - 2)/(k - 1) \rceil - 1$\end{document} random bits for networks consisting of n players.