Parameter learning in lookahead online algorithms for data acknowledgment

In the communication aspect of a computer network, data is sent by packets. If the communication channel is not completely safe, then the arrival of the packets must be acknowledged. In the data acknowledgment problem the goal is to determine the time of sending acknowledgments. Here we study lookahead online algorithms, where at time t the algorithm knows the arrival time of the packets arriving till time t+c. We present a new algorithm which is based on the idea of learning the optimal value of a parameter. The efficiency of the algorithms is investigated by testing them experimentally, and it is demonstrated that the new parameter learning algorithm performs significantly better than the original one.