The Complexity Landscape of Fixed-Parameter Directed Steiner Network Problems

Given a directed graph G and a list (s1, t1), …, (sd, td) of terminal pairs, the Directed Steiner Network problem asks for a minimum-cost subgraph of G that contains a directed si → ti path for every 1 ≤ i ≤ d. The special case Directed Steiner Tree (when we ask for paths from a root r to terminals t1, …, td) is known to be fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by the number of terminals, while the special case Strongly Connected Steiner Subgraph (when we ask for a path from every ti to every other tj) is known to be W[1]-hard parameterized by the number of terminals. We systematically explore the complexity landscape of directed Steiner problems to fully understand which other special cases are FPT or W[1]-hard. Formally, if \({\mathcal {H}} \) is a class of directed graphs, then we look at the special case of Directed Steiner Network where the list (s1, t1), …, (sd, td) of demands form a directed graph that is a member of \({\mathcal {H}} \) . Our main result is a complete characterization of the classes \({\mathcal {H}} \) resulting in fixed-parameter tractable special cases: we show that if every pattern in \({\mathcal {H}} \) has the combinatorial property of being “transitively equivalent to a bounded-length caterpillar with a bounded number of extra edges,” then the problem is FPT, and it is W[1]-hard for every recursively enumerable \({\mathcal {H}} \) not having this property. This complete dichotomy unifies and generalizes the known results showing that Directed Steiner Tree is FPT [Dreyfus and Wagner, Networks 1971], q-Root Steiner Tree is FPT for constant q [Suchý, WG 2016], Strongly Connected Steiner Subgraph is W[1]-hard [Guo et al., SIAM J. Discrete Math. 2011], and Directed Steiner Network is solvable in polynomial-time for constant number of terminals [Feldman and Ruhl, SIAM J. Comput. 2006], and moreover reveals a large continent of tractable cases that were not known before.