On the influence of lookahead in competitive paging algorithms

We introduce a new model of lookahead for on-line paging algorithms and study several algorithms using this model. A paging algorithm is on-line with strong lookahead l if it sees the present request and a sequence of future requests that contains l pairwise distinct pages. We show that strong lookahead has practical as well as theoretical importance and improves the competitive factors of on-line paging algorithms. This is the first model of lookahead having such properties. In addition to lower bounds we present a number of deterministic and randomized on-line paging algorithms with strong lookahead which are optimal or nearly optimal.