Towards Constant Time Multi-Call Rumor Spreading on Small-Set Expanders

We study a multi-call variant of the classic PUSH&PULL rumor spreading process where nodes can contact $k$ of their neighbors instead of a single one during both PUSH and PULL operations. We show that rumor spreading can be made faster at the cost of an increased amount of communication between the nodes. As a motivating example, consider the process on a complete graph of $n$ nodes: while the standard PUSH&PULL protocol takes $Θ(\log n)$ rounds, we prove that our $k$-PUSH&PULL variant completes in $Θ(\log_{k} n)$ rounds, with high probability. We generalize this result in an expansion-sensitive way, as has been done for the classic PUSH&PULL protocol for different notions of expansion, e.g., conductance and vertex expansion. We consider small-set vertex expanders, graphs in which every sufficiently small subset of nodes has a large neighborhood, ensuring strong local connectivity. In particular, when the expansion parameter satisfies $φ> 1$, these graphs have a diameter of $o(\log n)$, as opposed to other standard notions of expansion. Since the graph's diameter is a lower bound on the number of rounds required for rumor spreading, this makes small-set expanders particularly well-suited for fast information dissemination. We prove that $k$-PUSH&PULL takes $O(\log_φ n \cdot \log_{k} n)$ rounds in these expanders, with high probability. We complement this with a simple lower bound of $Ω(\log_φ n+ \log_{k} n)$ rounds.