Competitive Analysis of Online Path Selection: Impacts of Path Length, Topology, and System-Level Costs

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how path length, network topology, and system costs influence online path selection algorithms' efficiency, using competitive analysis to guide network design for improved social welfare.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical and experimental study of how network parameters affect the competitive ratio of online path selection algorithms, including the impact of system-level costs.

Findings

Path length bounds significantly affect algorithm competitiveness.

Network topology intricately influences performance.

System-level costs alter optimal algorithm design.

Abstract

Consider a communication network to which a sequence of self-interested users come and send requests for data transmission between nodes. This work studies the question of how to guide the path selection choices made by those online-arriving users and maximize the social welfare. Competitive analysis is the main technical tool. Specifically, the impacts of path length bounds and topology on the competitive ratio of the designed algorithm are analyzed theoretically and explored experimentally. We observe intricate and interesting relationships between the empirical performance and the studied network parameters, which shed some light on how to design the network. We also investigate the influence of system-level costs on the optimal algorithm design.