On the competitive ratio of the work function algorithm for the k-server problem

The k-server problem is one of the most fundamental online problems. The problem is to schedule k mobile servers to visit a sequence of points in a metric space with minimum total mileage. The k-server conjecture of Manasse, McGeogh, and Sleator states that there exists a k-competitive online algori...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theoretical computer science Vol. 324; no. 2; pp. 337 - 345
Main Authors: Bartal, Yair, Koutsoupias, Elias
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 20.09.2004
Elsevier
Subjects:
Algorithmics. Computability. Computer arithmetics
Applied sciences
Computer science; control theory; systems
Exact sciences and technology
Online algorithms
The k-server problem
Theoretical computing
Work function
Online algorithms
Work function
The k-server problem
Online algorithm
Metric space
Computer theory
k server problem
Competitive algorithms
ISSN:0304-3975, 1879-2294
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The k-server problem is one of the most fundamental online problems. The problem is to schedule k mobile servers to visit a sequence of points in a metric space with minimum total mileage. The k-server conjecture of Manasse, McGeogh, and Sleator states that there exists a k-competitive online algorithm. The conjecture has been open for over 15 years. The top candidate online algorithm for settling this conjecture is the work function algorithm ( WFA) which was shown to have competitive ratio at most 2 k−1. In this paper, we lend support to the conjecture that WFA is in fact k-competitive by proving that it achieves this ratio in several special metric spaces: the line, the star, and all metric spaces with k+2 points.
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ISSN:0304-3975
1879-2294
DOI:10.1016/j.tcs.2004.06.001