The proof of a conjecture of Bouabdallah and Sotteau

Let G be a connected graph of order n. A routing in G is a set of n(n 1) fixed paths for all ordered pairs of vertices of G. The edge-forwarding index of G, (G), is the minimum of the maximum number of paths specified by a routing passing through any edge ofG taken over all routings in G, and ,n is the minimum of (G) taken over all graphs of order nwith maximum degree at most . To determine n 2p 1,n for 4p 2p/3 1 ≤ n ≤ 6p, A. Bouabdallah and D. Sotteau proposed the following conjecture in [On the edge forwarding index problem for small graphs, Networks 23 (1993), 249–255]. The set 3 {1, 2, . . . , (4p)/3} can be partitioned into 2p pairs plus singletons such that the set of differences of the pairs is the set 2 {1, 2, . . . , p}. This article gives a proof of this conjecture and determines that n 2p 1,n is equal to 5 if 4p 2p/3 1 ≤ n ≤ 6p and to 8 if 3p p/3 1 ≤ n ≤ 3p (3p)/5 for any p ≥ 2. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 44(4), 292–296 2004