  Information does not generally behave like a conservative fluid flow in
communication networks with multiple sources and sinks. However, it is often
conceptually and practically useful to be able to associate separate data
streams with each source-sink pair, with only routing and no coding performed
at the network nodes. This raises the question of whether there is a nontrivial
class of network topologies for which achievability is always equivalent to
routability, for any combination of source signals and positive channel
capacities. This chapter considers possibly cyclic, directed, errorless
networks with n source-sink pairs and mutually independent source signals. The
concept of downward dominance is introduced and it is shown that, if the
network topology is downward dominated, then the achievability of a given
combination of source signals and channel capacities implies the existence of a
feasible multicommodity flow.
