12 research outputs found
An Optimal Lower Bound for Buffer Management in Multi-Queue Switches
In the online packet buffering problem (also known as the unweighted FIFO
variant of buffer management), we focus on a single network packet switching
device with several input ports and one output port. This device forwards
unit-size, unit-value packets from input ports to the output port. Buffers
attached to input ports may accumulate incoming packets for later transmission;
if they cannot accommodate all incoming packets, their excess is lost. A packet
buffering algorithm has to choose from which buffers to transmit packets in
order to minimize the number of lost packets and thus maximize the throughput.
We present a tight lower bound of e/(e-1) ~ 1.582 on the competitive ratio of
the throughput maximization, which holds even for fractional or randomized
algorithms. This improves the previously best known lower bound of 1.4659 and
matches the performance of the algorithm Random Schedule. Our result
contradicts the claimed performance of the algorithm Random Permutation; we
point out a flaw in its original analysis
Learning-Augmented Online Packet Scheduling with Deadlines
The modern network aims to prioritize critical traffic over non-critical
traffic and effectively manage traffic flow. This necessitates proper buffer
management to prevent the loss of crucial traffic while minimizing the impact
on non-critical traffic. Therefore, the algorithm's objective is to control
which packets to transmit and which to discard at each step. In this study, we
initiate the learning-augmented online packet scheduling with deadlines and
provide a novel algorithmic framework to cope with the prediction. We show that
when the prediction error is small, our algorithm improves the competitive
ratio while still maintaining a bounded competitive ratio, regardless of the
prediction error
A -Competitive Algorithm for Scheduling Packets with Deadlines
In the online packet scheduling problem with deadlines (PacketScheduling, for
short), the goal is to schedule transmissions of packets that arrive over time
in a network switch and need to be sent across a link. Each packet has a
deadline, representing its urgency, and a non-negative weight, that represents
its priority. Only one packet can be transmitted in any time slot, so, if the
system is overloaded, some packets will inevitably miss their deadlines and be
dropped. In this scenario, the natural objective is to compute a transmission
schedule that maximizes the total weight of packets which are successfully
transmitted. The problem is inherently online, with the scheduling decisions
made without the knowledge of future packet arrivals. The central problem
concerning PacketScheduling, that has been a subject of intensive study since
2001, is to determine the optimal competitive ratio of online algorithms,
namely the worst-case ratio between the optimum total weight of a schedule
(computed by an offline algorithm) and the weight of a schedule computed by a
(deterministic) online algorithm.
We solve this open problem by presenting a -competitive online
algorithm for PacketScheduling (where is the golden ratio),
matching the previously established lower bound.Comment: Major revision of the analysis and some other parts of the paper.
Another revision will follo