Finding path with maximum minimum capacity in graph

Question

I am helping a friend with a work related project where, he needs to calculate the maximum capacity from a node a to a node b, where the edge has a capacity. However the max

Answer 1

I would use some variant of Dijkstra's. I took the pseudo code below directly from Wikipedia and only changed 5 small things:

1. Renamed dist to width (from line 3 on)
2. Initialized each width to -infinity (line 3)
3. Initialized the width of the source to infinity (line 8)
4. Set the finish criterion to -infinity (line 14)
5. Modified the update function and sign (line 20 + 21)

1  function Dijkstra(Graph, source):
2      for each vertex v in Graph:                                 // Initializations
3          width[v] := -infinity  ;                                // Unknown width function from 
4                                                                  // source to v
5          previous[v] := undefined ;                              // Previous node in optimal path
6      end for                                                     // from source
7      
8      width[source] := infinity ;                                 // Width from source to source
9      Q := the set of all nodes in Graph ;                        // All nodes in the graph are
10                                                                 // unoptimized – thus are in Q
11      while Q is not empty:                                      // The main loop
12          u := vertex in Q with largest width in width[] ;       // Source node in first case
13          remove u from Q ;
14          if width[u] = -infinity:
15              break ;                                            // all remaining vertices are
16          end if                                                 // inaccessible from source
17          
18          for each neighbor v of u:                              // where v has not yet been 
19                                                                 // removed from Q.
20              alt := max(width[v], min(width[u], width_between(u, v))) ;
21              if alt > width[v]:                                 // Relax (u,v,a)
22                  width[v] := alt ;
23                  previous[v] := u ;
24                  decrease-key v in Q;                           // Reorder v in the Queue
25              end if
26          end for
27      end while
28      return width;
29  endfunction

Some (handwaving) explanation why this works: you start with the source. From there, you have infinite capacity to itself. Now you check all neighbors of the source. Assume the edges don't all have the same capacity (in your example, say (s, a) = 300). Then, there is no better way to reach b then via (s, b), so you know the best case capacity of b. You continue going to the best neighbors of the known set of vertices, until you reach all vertices.