Given a metric TSP with integer edge cost upper-bounded by a constant $C_{\max}$, can we find an poly-time algorithm solving this TSP instance?
1 Answer
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No polynomial-time algorithm exists, unless P=NP.
Indeed, even for TSP instances where all distances are $1$ or $2$ (note that these automatically satisfy the triangle inequality), Engebretsen and Karpinski showed that it is NP-hard to approximate TSP within a factor of $\frac{741}{740} - \epsilon$, for any $\epsilon > 0$.