Improved Bounds for Online Routing and Packing Via a Primal-Dual Approach

In this work we study a wide range of online and offline routing and packing problems with various objectives. We provide a unified approach, based on a clean primal-dual method, for the design of online algorithms for these problems, as well as improved bounds on the competitive factor. In particular, our analysis uses weak duality rather than a tailor made (i.e., problem specific) potential function. We demonstrate our ideas and results in the context of routing problems. Using our primal-dual approach, we develop a new generic online routing algorithm that outperforms previous algorithms suggested earlier by Azar et al. [5, 4]. We then show the applicability of our generic algorithm to various models and provide improved algorithms for achieving coordinate-wise competitiveness, maximizing throughput, and minimizing maximum load. In particular, we improve the results obtained by Goel et al. [13] by an O(log n) factor for the problem of achieving coordinate-wise competitiveness, a...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: FOCS
• Authors: Niv Buchbinder, Joseph Naor
• Keywords: Algorithm, Coordinate-wise Competitiveness, FOCS 2006, Routing, Theoretical Computer Science