For this issue, Pavel Vesely has contributed a wonderful overview of the ideas that were used in his SODA paper on packet scheduling with Marek Chrobak, Lukasz Jez and Jiri Sgall. This is a problem for which a 2-competitive algorithm as well as a lower bound of ϕ ≈ 1:618 was known already twenty years ago, but which resisted resolution for a long time. It is great that this problem has nally been resolved and that Pavel was willing to explain more of the ideas behind it for this column. He also provides an overview of open problems in this area.
