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Approximating Directed Steiner Problems via Tree Embedding Laekhanukit, Bundit Approximation Algorithms Network Design Graph Connectivity Directed Graph Directed Steiner problems are fundamental problems in Combinatorial Optimization and Theoretical Computer Science. An important problem in this genre is the k-edge connected directed Steiner tree (k-DST) problem. In this problem, we are given a directed graph G on n vertices with edge-costs, a root vertex r, a set of h terminals T and an integer k. The goal is to find a min-cost subgraph H subseteq G that connects r to each terminal t in T by k edge-disjoint r, t-paths. This problem includes as special cases the well-known directed Steiner tree (DST) problem (the case k=1) and the group Steiner tree (GST) problem. Despite having been studied and mentioned many times in literature, e.g., by Feldman et al. [SODA'09, JCSS'12], by Cheriyan et al. [SODA'12, TALG'14], by Laekhanukit [SODA'14] and in a survey by Kortsarz and Nutov [Handbook of Approximation Algorithms and Metaheuristics], there was no known non-trivial approximation algorithm for k-DST for k >= 2 even in a special case that an input graph is directed acyclic and has a constant number of layers. If an input graph is not acyclic, the complexity status of k-DST is not known even for a very strict special case that k=2 and h=2. In this paper, we make a progress toward developing a non-trivial approximation algorithm for k-DST. We present an O(D*k^{D-1}*log(n))-approximation algorithm for k-DST on directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) with D layers, which can be extended to a special case of k-DST on "general graphs" when an instance has a D-shallow optimal solution, i.e., there exist k edge-disjoint r, t-paths, each of length at most D, for every terminal t in T. For the case k=1 (DST), our algorithm yields an approximation ratio of O(D*log(h)), thus implying an O(log^3(h))-approximation algorithm for DST that runs in quasi-polynomial-time (due to the height-reduction of Zelikovsky [Algorithmica'97]). Our algorithm is based on an LP-formulation that allows us to embed a solution to a tree-instance of GST, which does not preserve connectivity. We show, however, that one can randomly extract a solution of k-DST from the tree-instance of GST. Our algorithm is almost tight when k and D are constants since the case that k=1 and D=3 is NP-hard to approximate to within a factor of O(log(h)), and our algorithm archives the same approximation ratio for this special case. We also remark that the k^{1/4-epsilon}-hardness instance of k-DST is a DAG with 6 layers, and our algorithm gives O(k^5*log(n))-approximation for this special case. Consequently, as our algorithm works for general graphs, we obtain an O(D*k^{D-1}*log(n))-approximation algorithm for a D-shallow instance of the k edge-connected directed Steiner subgraph problem, where we wish to connect every pair of terminals by k edgedisjoint paths. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Bundit Laekhanukit 2016 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 55, 43rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2016) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2016.74 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-62100 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2016.74 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode