Competitive analysis of most-request-first for scheduling broadcasts with start-up delay

In this paper, we give a tight and complete mathematical analysis of the Most-Request-First algorithm for scheduling on-demand broadcasts with start-up delay. The algorithm is natural and simple, yet its practical performance is surprisingly good. We derive tight upper and lower bounds on its competitive ratio under different system configurations. Our results reveal an interesting relationship between the start-up delay and the competitiveness of the algorithm.