Efficient on-line call control algorithms

The authors study the problem of on-line call control, i.e., the problem of accepting or rejecting an incoming call without knowledge of future calls. The problem is part of the more general problem of bandwidth allocation and management. Intuition suggests that knowledge of future call arrivals can be crucial to the performance of the system. They present on-line call control algorithms that, in some circumstances, are competitive, i.e., perform (up to a constant factor) as well as their off-line, clairvoyant counterparts. They also prove the optimality of some algorithms. The model is that of a line of nodes, and they investigate a variety of cases concerning the value of the calls. The value is gained only if the call terminates successfully, otherwise-if the call is rejected, or prematurely terminated-no value is gained. The performance of the algorithm is then measured by the cumulative value achieved, when given a sequence of calls. The variety of call value criteria captures the most natural cost assignments to network services