TY - GEN A1 - Harks, Tobias A1 - Heinz, Stefan A1 - Pfetsch, Marc T1 - Competitive Online Multicommodity Routing N2 - We study online multicommodity minimum cost routing problems in networks, where commodities have to be routed sequentially. Arcs are equipped with load dependent price functions defining the routing weights. We discuss an online algorithm that routes each commodity by minimizing a convex cost function that depends on the demands that are previously routed. We present a competitive analysis of this algorithm showing that for affine linear price functions this algorithm is $4K/2+K$-competitive, where $K$ is the number of commodities. For the parallel arc case this algorithm is optimal. Without restrictions on the price functions and network, no algorithm is competitive. Finally, we investigate a variant in which the demands have to be routed unsplittably. T3 - ZIB-Report - 06-27 KW - Online Optimization KW - Routing KW - Telecommunications Y1 - 2006 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-9212 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Harks, Tobias A1 - Heinz, Stefan A1 - Pfetsch, Marc T1 - Competitive Online Multicommodity Routing N2 - In this paper we study online multicommodity routing problems in networks, in which commodities have to be routed sequentially. The flow of each commodity can be split on several paths. Arcs are equipped with load dependent price functions defining routing costs, which have to be minimized. We discuss a greedy online algorithm that routes each commodity by minimizing a convex cost function that only depends on the demands previously routed. We present a competitive analysis of this algorithm showing that for affine linear price functions this algorithm is 4K2 (1+K)2 -competitive, where K is the number of commodities. For the single-source single-destination case, this algorithm is optimal. Without restrictions on the price functions and network, no algorithm is competitive. Finally, we investigate a variant in which the demands have to be routed unsplittably. T3 - ZIB-Report - 07-16 KW - Online Optimization KW - Routing KW - Telecommunications Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-9599 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Harks, Tobias A1 - Heinz, Stefan A1 - Pfetsch, Marc A1 - Vredeveld, Tjark T1 - Online Multicommodity Routing with Time Windows N2 - We consider a multicommodity routing problem, where demands are released \emph{online} and have to be routed in a network during specified time windows. The objective is to minimize a time and load dependent convex cost function of the aggregate arc flow. First, we study the fractional routing variant. We present two online algorithms, called Seq and Seq$^2$. Our first main result states that, for cost functions defined by polynomial price functions with nonnegative coefficients and maximum degree~$d$, the competitive ratio of Seq and Seq$^2$ is at most $(d+1)^{d+1}$, which is tight. We also present lower bounds of $(0.265\,(d+1))^{d+1}$ for any online algorithm. In the case of a network with two nodes and parallel arcs, we prove a lower bound of $(2-\frac{1}{2} \sqrt{3})$ on the competitive ratio for Seq and Seq$^2$, even for affine linear price functions. Furthermore, we study resource augmentation, where the online algorithm has to route less demand than the offline adversary. Second, we consider unsplittable routings. For this setting, we present two online algorithms, called U-Seq and U-Seq$^2$. We prove that for polynomial price functions with nonnegative coefficients and maximum degree~$d$, the competitive ratio of U-Seq and U-Seq$^2$ is bounded by $O{1.77^d\,d^{d+1}}$. We present lower bounds of $(0.5307\,(d+1))^{d+1}$ for any online algorithm and $(d+1)^{d+1}$ for our algorithms. Third, we consider a special case of our framework: online load balancing in the $\ell_p$-norm. For the fractional and unsplittable variant of this problem, we show that our online algorithms are $p$ and $O{p}$ competitive, respectively. Such results where previously known only for scheduling jobs on restricted (un)related parallel machines. T3 - ZIB-Report - 07-22 KW - Online Optimization KW - Routing KW - Telecommunications Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-9654 SN - 1438-0064 ER -