Call preemption in communication networks

The authors address the problem of preempting ongoing calls in a communication network in order to accommodate new calls. They investigate some problems that relate to making the best decision on which (if any) call to preempt. It is shown that versions of the problem are computationally intractable, and simple and efficient heuristics to approximate the optimal strategy are provided. The authors study the problem from the online perspective, and characterize what can be done under different circumstances