On the competitiveness of the move-to-front rule

We consider the list access problem and show that one questionable assumption in the original cost model presented by Sleator and Tarjan 13] and subsequent literature allowed for several competitiveness results of the move-to-front rule (MTF). We present an oo-line algorithm for the list access problem and prove that, under a more realistic cost model, no on-line algorithm can be c-competitive for any constant c, MTF included.