Mini round robin : an enhanced frame-based scheduling algorithm for multimedia networks

The broad spread of packet data networks and the emergence of applications in multimedia communications, created a driving force towards an improved Quality of Service (QoS) model for today's Internet. A primary component of this model is packet schedulers. We introduce a new frame-based scheduling technique called Mini Round Robin (MRR) that is primarily designed for providing lower latency bounds, and lower start-up latency bound for low-rate but high-priority flows. Most scheduling methods are based on the concept of providing a delay bound based on the bandwidth reserved by the session. The main advantage of MRR is its ability to decouple the delay from session bandwidth. This enables applications such as Voiceover- IP to demand low delay despite the low reserved bit rate of the voice sessions. MRR is computationally very efficient with an O(1) per packet work complexity, and it provides better fairness to multimedia sessions compared to other frame-based scheduling algorithms. We show that some of the most recently introduced schedulers fail to provide fairness or bounded latency under certain network conditions, and we propose a solution to overcome this problem. Finally, we present an extensive set of performance and validation test results obtained from simulations conducted using network models built for each one of the scheduling algorithms under consideration.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofGraduat