New results for online page replication

AbstractWe study the online page replication problem. We present a new randomized online algorithm for rings which is 2.37297-competitive, improving the best previous result of 3.16396. We also show that no randomized online algorithm is better than 1.75037-competitive on the ring; previously, only a 1.58198 bound for a single edge was known. We extend the problem in several new directions: continuous metrics, variable size requests, and replication before service. This yields simplified proofs of several known results