Rainbow Connection Number of Graphs with Diameter 3

A path in an edge-colored graph G is rainbow if no two edges of the path are colored the same. The rainbow connection number rc(G) of G is the smallest integer k for which there exists a k-edge-coloring of G such that every pair of distinct vertices of G is connected by a rainbow path. Let f(d) denote the minimum number such that rc(G) ≤ f(d) for each bridgeless graph G with diameter d. In this paper, we shall show that 7 ≤ f(3) ≤ 9.