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MaxMinSum Steiner Systems for Access-Balancing in Distributed Storage

Many code families such as low-density parity-check codes, fractional repetition codes, batch codes and private information retrieval codes with low storage overhead rely on the use of combinatorial block designs or derivatives thereof. In the context of distributed storage applications, one is often faced with system design issues that impose additional constraints on the coding schemes, and therefore on the underlying block designs. Here, we address one such problem, pertaining to server access frequency balancing, by introducing a new form of Steiner systems, termed MaxMinSum Steiner systems. MaxMinSum Steiner systems are characterized by the property that the minimum value of the sum of points (elements) within a block is maximized, or that the minimum sum of block indices containing some fixed point is maximized. We show that proper relabelings of points in the Bose and Skolem constructions for Steiner triple systems lead to optimal MaxMin values for the sums of interest; for the duals of the designs, we exhibit block labelings that are within a 3/4 multiplicative factor from the optimum.