Stochastic Network Speed Scaling with Competitive Ratios Independent of the Network

Yash Khanna

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arXiv · 2610.03848

Stochastic Network Speed Scaling with Competitive Ratios Independent of the Network

Yash Khanna

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Abstract

In network speed scaling, jobs arrive over time at a network of servers whose speeds can be tuned, every job must be processed by the servers along one of its allowed routes, and the goal is to minimize the total flow time plus the total energy. For stochastic arrivals, the competitive ratio of Vaze and Nair depends on the network, through the lengths of the routes it uses. We show that this dependence can be removed: we give an algorithm, which routes the jobs by solving a convex program and runs every server at a fixed speed, whose competitive ratio depends only on the power functions; for $P(s)=s^2$, it is at most the golden ratio $φ\approx1.618$. The key idea is a lower bound on the optimal cost which, like the cost of our algorithm, is a sum over the servers of a function of each server's load, so the analysis reduces to a single server. We also show that the routing rule of Vaze and Nair can be a factor $Ω(L)$ away from optimal, where $L$ is the length of the longest route.

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BibTeX RIS

Yash Khanna. 2026-10-13. Stochastic Network Speed Scaling with Competitive Ratios Independent of the Network. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03848

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