Replica placement via capacitated vertex cover

In this paper, we study the replica placement problem on trees and present a constant factor approximation algorithm (with an additional additive constant factor). This improves the best known previous algorithm having an approximation ratio dependent on the maximum degree of the tree. Our techniques also extend to the partial cover version. Our algorithms are based on the LP rounding technique. The core component of our algorithm exploits a connection between the natural LP solutions of the replica placement problem and the capacitated vertex cover problem.