Comparison of rate-based service disciplines

This paper compares six new queue service disciplines that can be implemented at the output queues of switches in a connection-oriented packet switched data network. These are Virtual Clock, Fair Queueing, Delay-Earliest-DueDate, Jitter-Earliest-Due-Date, Stop-and-Go and Hierarchical Round Robin. We describe their mechanisms, their similarities and differences, and some implementation strategies. In particular, we show why each discipline can or cannot provide bandwidth, delay and delay jitter guarantees. This leads to some interesting conclusions about the relative strengths and weaknesses of each approach. 1 Introduction High speed networking introduces opportunities for new applications that have stringent performance requirements in terms of throughput, delay, delay jitter 1 and loss rate 3. Conventional packet switching data networks with windowbased flow control and first-come-first-served service discipline cannot provide services with strict performance guarantees. Thus, n...