A maiden analysis of Longest Wait First

We consider server scheduling strategies to minimize average flow time in a multicast pull system where data items have uniform size. The algorithm Longest Wait First (LWF) always services the page where the aggregate waiting times of the outstanding requests for that page is maximized. We provide the first non-trivial analysis of the worst case performance of LWF. On the negative side, we show that LWF is not s-speed O(1)-competitive for s < 1+ 5 2 . On the positive side, we show that LWF is 6-speed O(1)-competitive.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: SODA
• Authors: Jeff Edmonds, Kirk Pruhs
• Keywords: Aggregate Waiting Times, Algorithm Longest Wait, Algorithms, Average Flow Time, SODA 2004