A Nearly Optimal Deterministic Algorithm for Online Transportation Problem

We propose a new deterministic algorithm called Subtree-Decomposition for the online transportation problem and show that the algorithm is $(8m-5)$-competitive, where m is the number of server sites. It has long been known that the competitive ratio of any deterministic algorithm is lower bounded by $2m-1$ for this problem. On the other hand, the conjecture proposed by Kalyanasundaram and Pruhs in 1998 asking whether a deterministic $(2m-1)$-competitive algorithm exists for the online transportation problem has remained open for over two decades. The upper bound on the competitive ratio, $8m-5$, which is the result of this paper, is the first to come close to this conjecture, and is the best possible within a constant factor.