Randomized Competitive Analysis for Two Server Problems

We prove that there exists a randomized online algorithm for the 2-server 3-point problem whose expected competitive ratio is at most 1.5897. This is the first nontrivial upper bound for randomized k-server algorithms in a general metric space whose competitive ratio is well below the corresponding deterministic lower bound (= 2 in the 2-server case)

Randomized Competitive Analysis for Two Server Problems

We prove that there exists a randomized online algorithm for the 2-server 3-point problem whose expected competitive ratio is at most 1.5897. This is the first nontrivial upper bound for randomized k-server algorithms in a general metric space whose competitive ratio is well below the corresponding deterministic lower bound (= 2 in the 2-server case)