  Consider N equally-spaced points on a circle of circumference N. Choose at
random n points out of $N$ on this circle and append clockwise an arc of
integral length k to each such point. The resulting random set is made of a
random number of connected components. Questions such as the evaluation of the
probability of random covering and parking configurations, number and length of
the gaps are addressed. They are the discrete versions of similar problems
raised in the continuum. For each value of k, asymptotic results are presented
when n,N both go to infinity according to two different regimes. This model may
equivalently be viewed as a random partitioning problem of N items into n
recipients. A grand-canonical balls in boxes approach is also supplied, giving
some insight into the multiplicities of the box filling amounts or spacings.
The latter model is a k-nearest neighbor random graph with N vertices and kn
edges. We shall also briefly consider the covering problem in the context of a
random graph model with N vertices and n (out-degree 1) edges whose endpoints
are no more bound to be neighbors.
