Fractional covers and communication complexity

It is possible to view communication complexity as the solution of an integer programming problem. The authors relax this integer programming problem to a linear programming problem, and try to deduce from it information regarding the original communication complexity question. This approach works well for nondeterministic communication complexity. In this case the authors get a special case of Lovasz´s fractional cover measure and use it to completely characterize the amortized nondeterministic communication complexity. In the case of deterministic complexity the situation is more complicated. The authors discuss two attempts, and obtain some results using each of them