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• We consider a variant of the online buffer management problem. • This variant is called the 2-bounded delay buffer management problem with lookahead. • We design an optimal online algorithm for this variant. The bounded delay buffer management problem, which was proposed by Kesselman et al. (STOC 2001 and SIAM Journal on Computing 33(3), 2004), is an online problem focusing on buffer management of a switch supporting Quality of Service (QoS). The problem definition is as follows: Packets arrive to a buffer over time and each packet is specified by the release time , deadline and value. An algorithm can transmit at most one packet from the buffer at each integer time and can gain its value as the profit if transmitting the packet by its deadline after its release time. The objective of this problem is to maximize the gained profit. We say that an instance of the problem is s -bounded if for any packet, an algorithm has at most s chances to transmit it. For any s ≥ 2 , Hajek (CISS 2001) showed that the competitive ratio of any deterministic algorithm is at least (1 + 5) / 2 ≥ 1.618. Recently, Veselý et al. (SODA 2019) designed an online algorithm matching the lower bound. Böhm et al. (ISAAC 2016 and Theoretical Computer Science, 2019) introduced the lookahead ability to an online algorithm. At a time t , the algorithm obtains information about packets arriving at time t + 1 , and showed that for s = 2 , there is an algorithm which achieves the competitive ratio of (− 1 + 13) / 2 ≤ 1.303. Also, they showed that the competitive ratio of any deterministic algorithm is at least (1 + 17) / 4 ≥ 1.280. In this paper, for the 2-bounded model with lookahead, we design an algorithm with a matching competitive ratio of (1 + 17) / 4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the online buffer management problem, which formulates the problem of managing network switches supporting Quality of Service guarantee. We improve competitive ratios of the 2-value multi-queue switch model, where the value of a packet is restricted to 1 or α ( ≥ 1 ) . We use a similar approach as Azar and Richter (STOC 2003 and Algorithmica 43(1-2), 2005) did for the multi-value multi-queue switch model. Namely, we show that the competitive ratio of “the relaxed model” of the 2-value multi-queue switch model is at most x = min ⁡ { c + 2 − c α ( 2 − c ) + c − 1 , c α } , if the competitive ratio of an online algorithm for the unit-value multi-queue switch model is at most c . Azar and Richter's technique implies that if the competitive ratio of the 2-value single-queue switch model is x ′ , then the competitive ratio of the 2-value multi-queue switch model is at most x x ′ . We obtain several results using known c and x ′ . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]