Scheduling algorithms for optical packet fabrics

Utilizing optical technologies to build packet fabrics for high-capacity switches and routers has several advantages in terms of scalability, power consumption, and cost. However, several technology related problems have to be overcome to be able to use such an approach. The reconfiguration times of optical crossbars are longer than those of electronic fabrics and end-to-end clock recovery in such systems add to the reconfiguration overheads. Both these problems can limit the efficiency of optical packet fabrics. In addition, existing work on input-buffered switches mostly assumes fixed size packets (referred as envelopes in this paper). When fixed size switching is used for Internet protocol networks where packets are of variable size, the incoming packets need to be fragmented to fit the fixed size envelopes. This fragmentation can lead to, possibly large loss of bandwidth and even instability. This paper addresses all of the above issues by presenting packetization and scheduling techniques that allow optical packet fabrics to be used within switches and routers. The proposed scheme aggregates multiple packets in a single envelope and when used in combination with proper scheduling algorithms, it can provide system stability as well as bandwidth and delay guarantees. As a result of the aggregation method, the reconfiguration frequency required from the optics is reduced, facilitating the use of optical technologies in implementing packet switch fabrics.     

Concerning mean packet delay as a performance measure in single channel networks

It is shown that, under certain conditions, it is possible to have mean packet delay greater than mean message delay in single channel networks. The analysis includes overheads and transmission interference. It is shown further that for exponential message lengths, under the same assumptions, mean packet delay is always greater than mean message delay.     

Commercial, legal, and international aspects of packet communications

Packet switching technology emerged rapidly in the 1970's as another viable mode of communications switching, along with circuit and message switching. Since packet switching offers economical and versatile data communication capabilities in a multiuser environment, it is particularly well suited for furnishing public data communication network services. Public packet networks are now established or being developed in most industrialized countries, and the introduction of these networks has raised policy issues relating to the structure and regulation of the national networks, and the interconnection of national networks into an international packet switching system. This paper reviews these issues and concludes that public packet switching network services will continue to be regulated in all cases; that competitive packet networks will coexist in the U.S. and in Canada, but that only one national packet network will exist in each of most other countries; that packet networks will aggravate the problem of distinguishing nonregulated data processing services from regulated data communication services; that international interconnection of public packet networks based upon CCITT standanh will occur rapidly over the next several years; and that a unified international packet switching system will eventually emerge similar to today's international telephone and telex systems.     

光突发交换中的突发包组装技术研究

光突发交换是近几年出现的一种很有前途的光交换技术，比电路交换灵活，带宽利用率高，又比光分组交换易于实现，突发包的组装是光突发交换的关键技术，在很大程度上影响到光突发交换网络的性能。文中介绍了光突发包的格式，描述了交换网络中突发包组装所需的层次结构和功能结构，并给出了一种典型的生成算法。最后，对选择突发包组装时间应考虑的各种因素进行了系统的分析。     

Optimum packet size for data networks with random channel errors

The formula for the optimum packet size required for maximum utilisation of network lines can be derived in several different ways, under a usual assumption of error-free transmission lines/channels. An analysis based on the concept of minimisation of network overheads is used to derive the optimum packet size for lines having random-error characteristics. The messages are assumed to have a Poisson distribution, and the network uses a stop-and-wait strategy for error detection and correction.     

DCMA: A Label Switching MAC for Efficient Packet Forwarding in Multihop Wireless Networks

This paper addresses the problem of efficient packet forwarding in a multihop, wireless "mesh" network. We present an efficient interface contained forwarding (ICF) architecture for a "wireless router," i.e., a forwarding node with a single wireless network interface card (NIC) in a multihop wireless network that allows a packet to be forwarded entirely within the NIC of the forwarding node without requiring per-packet intervention by the node's CPU. To effectively forward packets in a pipelined fashion without incurring the 802.11-related overheads of multiple independent channel accesses, we specify a slightly modified version of the 802.11 MAC, called data driven cut-through multiple access (DCMA) that uses multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)-like labels in the control packets, in conjunction with a combined ACK/RTS packet, to reduce 802.11 channel access latencies. Our proposed technique can be used in combination with "frame bursting" as specified by the IEEE 802.11e standard to provide an end-to-end cut-through channel access. Using extensive simulations, we compare the performance of DCMA with 802.11 DCF MAC with respect to throughput and latency and suggest a suitable operating region to get maximum benefits using our mechanism as compared to 802.11     

Improving the performance of packet-switched networks-on-chip by SDM-based adaptive shortcut paths

Reducing the NoC power is critical for scaling up the number of nodes in future many-core systems. Most NoC designs adopt packet-switching to benefit from its high throughput and excellent scalability. These benefits, however, come at the price of the power consumption and latency overheads of routers. Circuit-switching, on the other hand, enjoys a significant reduction in power and latency of communication by directing data over pre-established circuits, but the relatively large circuit setup time and low resource utilization of this switching mechanism is often prohibitive. In this paper, we address one of the major problems of circuit-switching, i.e. the circuit setup time overhead, by an efficient and fast algorithm based on the time-division multiplexing (TDM) scheme. We then further improve the performance by reserving circuits for anticipated messages, and hence completely hide circuit setup time. To address the low resource utilization problem, we integrate the proposed circuit-switching into a packet switched NoC and use unused circuit resources to transfer packet-switched data. Evaluation results show considerable reduction in NoC power consumption and packet latency.     

Optimum packet size in a packet-switched data network

In packet-switched data networks, overheads are incurred primarily due to two aspects: the protocol, i.e. headers. acknowledgements etc. and blank padding of the partially used packet. In the letter, the overhead factors due to these two sources are derived under certain assumptions. Simulations using exponentially distributed messages have been carried out, and results from these are also presented. It is shown that, under certain conditions, it is possible to have a packet size that minimises the total overheads.     

High-Speed Packet Switching Systems for Multimedia Communications

High-speed packet switching (HPS) systems can Provide flexible, economical, high-quaiity services for integrated voice, video, and data communications. To realize such HPS systems, methods have been developed to bring about high-speed protocol processing as well as a system architecture for facilitating high-throughput switching. Adopting the parallel processing algorithm into protocol processing allows us to achieve high-speed packet protocol processing of about 100 times faster than conventional processing. Furthermore, a fully distributed system architecture in addition to hierarchical interconnection networks can achieve high-capacity packet switching systems. The proposed HPS system is thus capable of accommodating lines of up to 10-50 Mbits/s, of providing high-throughput switching capability of 1 000 000 packets/s, and of having an average delay of less than 2 ms. Furthermore, an evaluation of network delay performances of video conferencing and voice communications indicate that HPS systems are quite suitable for handling such multimedia communications.     

Photonic fast packet switching

Several approaches to photonic fast packet switching systems are presented. The wavelength-, time-, code-, and space-division approaches, including free-space photonic fast packet switching, are discussed. These approaches to photonic fast packet switching systems show that the research in this area is still in its infancy. Among various solutions, those based on a wavelength-division transport network and an electronic controller are most mature     

An optical router with multistage management functions for asynchronous optical packet switching network

An optical router with multistage distributed management features for the asynchronous optical packet switching (OPS) network is presented, which can improve switching capacity and all-optical scalability. A compact recycling-fiber-delay-line (Rec-FDL) based collision resolution mechanism is proposed to resolve the contentions for asynchronous and variable length optical packets. The analysis models of stabilities, packet loss rates (PLR) and average packet waiting latencies (PWL) for the router are developed based on the timer based optical packet assembly algorithm. The simulation shows that PLR and PWL for a 400-byte optical packet transmitted in the 32 wavelengths dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) system equal to 3.48 × 10⁻⁴ and 0.072 ns, respectively. The non-blocking switching can be realized for the packets with lengths less than the buffer granularity of the Rec-FDL, and the optimized performance for the proposed router can be obtained through properly selecting of the system parameters.     

IP应用在ATM网络中的协议开销

探讨ＡＴＭ网络中与ＩＰ应用相关的开销问题,计算并分析了在不同传输协议上数据帧的开销以及不同应用数据单元对传输效率的影响。     

光突发交换技术

光突发换是近几年出现的一种光交换技术 ,它交换的单元粒度介于电路交换和分组交换之间 ,比电路交换灵活 ,带宽利用率高 ,又比光分组交换易于实现 ;全面介绍了这种交换技术 ,并对它与电路交换和光分组交换性能进行了比较。另外 ,还对光突发交换的关键技术进行了讨论 ,结合下一代互联网的技术趋势 ,对光突发交换的前景进行了评价。     

The sliding-window packet switch: a new class of packet switch architecture with plural memory modules and decentralized control

Shared-memory based packet switches are known to provide the best possible throughput performance for bursty data traffic in high-speed packet networks and internets compared with other buffering strategies under conditions of identical memory resources deployed in the switch. However, scaling of shared-memory packet switches to a larger size has been restricted mainly due to the physical limitations imposed by the memory-access speed and the centralized control for switching functions in shared-memory switches. A new scalable architecture for a shared-memory packet switch, called the sliding-window (SW) switch, is proposed to overcome these limitations. The SW switch introduces a new class of switching architecture, where physically separate multiple memory modules are logically shared among all the ports of the switch, and the control is decentralized. The SW switch alleviates the bottleneck caused by the centralized control of switching functions in large shared-memory switches. Decentralized switching functions enable the SW switch to operate in a pipeline fashion to enhance scalability and switching capacity compared with that of previously known classes of shared-memory switch architecture.     

The evolution of packet switching

Over the past decade data communications has been revolutionized by a radically new technology called packet switching. In 1968 virtually all interactive data communication networks were circuit switched, the same as the telephone network. Circuit switching networks preallocate transmission bandwidth for an entire call or session. However, since interactive data traffic occurs in short bursts 90 percent or more of this bandwidth is wasted. Thus, as digital electronics became inexpensive enough, it became dramatically more cost-effective to completely redesign communications networks, introducing the concept of packet switching where the transmission bandwidth is dynamically allocated, permitting many users to share the same transmission line previously required for one user. Packet switching has been so successful, not only in improving the economics of data communications but in enhancing reliability and functional flexibility as well, that in 1978 virtually all new data networks being built throughout the world are based on packet switching. An open question at this time is how long will it take for voice communications to be revolutionized as well by packet switching technology. In order to better understand both the past and future evolution of this fast moving technology, this paper examines in detail the history and trends of packet switching.     

A New Performance Measurement for Voice Transmission in Burst and Packet Switching

Voice transmission in burst switching is characterized by the process of talkspurt clipping, while in packet switching, it is characterized by the process of packet delay. In most analyses, the talkspurt clipping has been measured by the clipping probability averaged over all bits, and the packet delay has been measured by the delay performance averaged over all packets. The resulting measures overlook the duration of clipping in a talkspurt and the significant difference of delay in packets arriving at different times. Because of the nature of voice, different effects of these may result in substantially different degrees of voice distortion. This paper studies the worst case performance of both processes. The voice traffic is modeled as a process alternating between overload and underload periods. Statistically, more clipping and delay will be incurred while in the overload period. By worst case we mean that, in burst switching, we measure the worst case of talkspurt clipping duration in an overload period, while in packet switching, we measure the worst case of packet delay in an overload period. Furthermore, a simple closed form equation is derived which gives a very good approximation of the worst case mean packet delay performance. This equation can be more generally applied when the packet service time is to be geometrically distributed or when voice and data are to be integrated. The voice performances in burst switching and packet switching are also compared.     

Unified approaches to integrated-service networks–burst and fast packet switching

The increasing demand for communication services, coupled with recent technological advances in communication media and switching techniques, has resulted in a proliferation of new and expanded services. Currently, networks are needed which can transmit voice, data and video services in an application-independent fashion. Unified approaches employ a single switching technique across the entire network bandwidth, thus allowing services to be switched in an application-independent manner. This paper presents a taxonomy of integrated-service networks, including a look at NISDN, while focusing on unified approaches to integrated-service networks. The two most promising unified approaches are burst and fast packet switching. Burst switching is a circuit switching-based approach which allocates channel bandwidth to a connection only during the transmission of ‘bursts’ of information. Fast packet switching is a packet switching-based approach which can be characterized by very high transmission rates on network links and simple, hard-wired protocols which match the rapid channel speed of the network. Both approaches are being proposed as possible implementations for integrated-service networks. We survey these two approaches, and also examine the key performance issues found in fast packet switching. We then present the results of a simulation study of a fast packet switching network.     

光突发交换网关键技术及发展

本主要介绍了光突发交换网的关键技术，并在同光波长交换网络和光分组交换网络相比较的基础上，对光突发交换的发展前景做了乐观的估计。     

一种基于应用需求的网络路径可用带宽测量策略

报文对间隔及报文单向延迟的变化可以反映报文发送速率与可用带宽的大小关系,根据这个规律本文提出了一种基于应用需求的网络路径可用带宽测量策略COPP.COPP发送多组发送速率不断增大的报文对序列,并从每组序列中求出所有成为转换点的报文对,然后根据这些报文对所受干扰的不同程度赋以它们不同的权重,从而得到路径可用带宽.COPP可根据具体应用不同的带宽需求动态决定测量范围,仿真实验研究了测量中探测报文大小的选择,并通过与Pathload等其它带宽测量方法的比较验证了COPP具有低开销、高精度、平稳性好且对网络状态变化敏感等优点.     

无线网络下一种改进的TCP拥塞控制机制TCP_RD

本文探讨了无线网络下误码丢包对TCP性能的影响,认为短期内误码丢包严重时,可以通过数据发送速率的降低来有效避免不必要的误码丢包,从而提高数据发送的可靠性,减少移动主机不必要的能源消耗和系统的额外开销。基于此,本文提出了一种改进的TCP拥塞控制机制TCP_RD,此机制实现简单,系统额外开销小,既能有效提高数据发送的可靠性,又不会过多降低系统吞吐量和加大系统时延。