Breaking the Barrier of 2 for the Competitiveness of Longest Queue Drop

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Antoniadis, Antonios, Englert, Matthias, Matsakis, Nicolaos, Veselý, Pavel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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author Antoniadis, Antonios
Englert, Matthias
Matsakis, Nicolaos
Veselý, Pavel
author_facet Antoniadis, Antonios
Englert, Matthias
Matsakis, Nicolaos
Veselý, Pavel
contents We consider the problem of managing the buffer of a shared-memory switch that transmits packets of unit value. A shared-memory switch consists of an input port, a number of output ports, and a buffer with a specific capacity. In each time step, an arbitrary number of packets arrive at the input port, each packet designated for one output port. Each packet is added to the queue of the respective output port. If the total number of packets exceeds the capacity of the buffer, some packets have to be irrevocably evicted. At the end of each time step, each output port transmits a packet in its queue and the goal is to maximize the number of transmitted packets. The Longest Queue Drop (LQD) online algorithm accepts any arriving packet to the buffer. However, if this results in the buffer exceeding its memory capacity, then LQD drops a packet from whichever queue is currently the longest, breaking ties arbitrarily. The LQD algorithm was first introduced in 1991, and is known to be $2$-competitive since 2001. Although LQD remains the best known online algorithm for the problem and is of practical interest, determining its true competitiveness is a long-standing open problem. We show that LQD is 1.6918-competitive, establishing the first $(2-\varepsilon)$ upper bound for the competitive ratio of LQD, for a constant $\varepsilon>0$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2012_03906
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Breaking the Barrier of 2 for the Competitiveness of Longest Queue Drop
Antoniadis, Antonios
Englert, Matthias
Matsakis, Nicolaos
Veselý, Pavel
Data Structures and Algorithms
F.2.2
We consider the problem of managing the buffer of a shared-memory switch that transmits packets of unit value. A shared-memory switch consists of an input port, a number of output ports, and a buffer with a specific capacity. In each time step, an arbitrary number of packets arrive at the input port, each packet designated for one output port. Each packet is added to the queue of the respective output port. If the total number of packets exceeds the capacity of the buffer, some packets have to be irrevocably evicted. At the end of each time step, each output port transmits a packet in its queue and the goal is to maximize the number of transmitted packets. The Longest Queue Drop (LQD) online algorithm accepts any arriving packet to the buffer. However, if this results in the buffer exceeding its memory capacity, then LQD drops a packet from whichever queue is currently the longest, breaking ties arbitrarily. The LQD algorithm was first introduced in 1991, and is known to be $2$-competitive since 2001. Although LQD remains the best known online algorithm for the problem and is of practical interest, determining its true competitiveness is a long-standing open problem. We show that LQD is 1.6918-competitive, establishing the first $(2-\varepsilon)$ upper bound for the competitive ratio of LQD, for a constant $\varepsilon>0$.
title Breaking the Barrier of 2 for the Competitiveness of Longest Queue Drop
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
F.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.03906