An optimal algorithm for on-line bipartite matching
STOC '90 Proceedings of the twenty-second annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
SIAM Journal on Computing
Competitive queueing policies for QoS switches
SODA '03 Proceedings of the fourteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Buffer Overflow Management in QoS Switches
SIAM Journal on Computing
The zero-one principle for switching networks
STOC '04 Proceedings of the thirty-sixth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
Online auctions with re-usable goods
Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
An optimal online algorithm for packet scheduling with agreeable deadlines
SODA '05 Proceedings of the sixteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Online ascending auctions for gradually expiring items
SODA '05 Proceedings of the sixteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Probability and Computing: Randomized Algorithms and Probabilistic Analysis
Probability and Computing: Randomized Algorithms and Probabilistic Analysis
Competitive queue policies for differentiated services
Journal of Algorithms
Lower and upper bounds on FIFO buffer management in QoS switches
ESA'06 Proceedings of the 14th conference on Annual European Symposium - Volume 14
Better online buffer management
SODA '07 Proceedings of the eighteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Considering suppressed packets improves buffer management in QoS switches
SODA '07 Proceedings of the eighteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Improved online algorithms for buffer management in QoS switches
ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG)
Competitive queue management for latency sensitive packets
Proceedings of the nineteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Prompt Mechanisms for Online Auctions
SAGT '08 Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory
Collecting weighted items from a dynamic queue
SODA '09 Proceedings of the twentieth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms
Concentration of Measure for the Analysis of Randomized Algorithms
Concentration of Measure for the Analysis of Randomized Algorithms
Truthful Mechanisms via Greedy Iterative Packing
APPROX '09 / RANDOM '09 Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop and 13th International Workshop on Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques
Packet buffering: randomization beats deterministic algorithms
STACS'05 Proceedings of the 22nd annual conference on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science
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We study the following balls and bins stochastic process: There is a buffer with B bins, and there is a stream of balls X = {X1, X2, ... ,XT} such that Xi is the number of balls that arrive before time i but after time i-1. Once a ball arrives, it is stored in one of the unoccupied bins. If all the bins are occupied then the ball is thrown away. In each time step, we select a bin uniformly at random, clear it, and gain its content. Once the stream of balls ends, all the remaining balls in the buffer are cleared and added to our gain. We are interested in analyzing the expected gain of this randomized process with respect to that of an optimal gain-maximizing strategy, which gets the same online stream of balls, and clears a ball from a bin, if exists, at any step. We name this gain ratio the loss of serving in the dark. In this paper, we determine the exact loss of serving in the dark. We prove that the expected gain of the randomized process is worse by a factor of ρ + ε from that of the optimal gain-maximizing strategy for any ε 0, where ρ = max_{α 1} α eα/((α-1)eα + e - 1) ~ 1.69996 and B = Ω (1/ε3). We also demonstrate that this bound is essentially tight as there are specific ball streams for which the above-mentioned gain ratio tends to ρ. Our stochastic process occurs naturally in many applications. We present a prompt and truthful mechanism for bounded capacity auctions, and an application relating to packets scheduling.