Abstract

The competitive analysis of on-line algorithms has been criticized as being too crude and unrealistic. We propose renements of competitive analysis in two directions: The rst restricts the power of the adversary by allowing only certain input distributions, while the other allows for comparisons between information regimes for on-line decision-making. We illustrate the rst with an application to the paging problem; as a byproduct we characterize completely the work functions of this important special case of the k-server problem. We use the second renement to explore the power of lookahead in server and task systems. Key words. On-line algorithms, competitive analysis, paging problem, metrical task systems AMS subject classications. 68Q05, 68Q25 1.

Citations