On the flow-level dynamics of a packet-switched network
The packet is the fundamental unit of transportation in modern communication networks such as the Internet. Physical layer scheduling decisions are made at the level of packets, and packet-level models with exogenous arrival processes have long been employed to study network performance, as well as...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
2012
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73522 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0737-3259 |
| _version_ | 1826203508581335040 |
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| author | Moallemi, Ciamac C. Shah, Devavrat |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Moallemi, Ciamac C. Shah, Devavrat |
| author_sort | Moallemi, Ciamac C. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The packet is the fundamental unit of transportation in modern communication networks such as the Internet. Physical layer scheduling decisions are made at the level of packets, and packet-level models with exogenous arrival processes have long been employed to study network performance, as well as design scheduling policies that more efficiently utilize network resources. On the other hand, a user of the network is more concerned with end-to-end bandwidth, which is allocated through congestion control policies such as TCP. Utility-based flow-level models have played an important role in understanding congestion control protocols. In summary, these two classes of models have provided separate insights for flow-level and packet-level dynamics of a network. In this paper, we wish to study these two dynamics together. We propose a joint flow-level and packet-level stochastic model for the dynamics of a network, and an associated policy for congestion control and packet scheduling that is based on alpha-weighted policies from the literature. We provide a fluid analysis for the model that establishes the throughput optimality of the proposed policy, thus validating prior insights based on separate packet-level and flow-level models. By analyzing a critically scaled fluid model under the proposed policy, we provide constant factor performance bounds on the delay performance and characterize the invariant states of the system. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:38:28Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/73522 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:38:28Z |
| publishDate | 2012 |
| publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/735222022-09-28T09:08:15Z On the flow-level dynamics of a packet-switched network Moallemi, Ciamac C. Shah, Devavrat Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems Shah, Devavrat The packet is the fundamental unit of transportation in modern communication networks such as the Internet. Physical layer scheduling decisions are made at the level of packets, and packet-level models with exogenous arrival processes have long been employed to study network performance, as well as design scheduling policies that more efficiently utilize network resources. On the other hand, a user of the network is more concerned with end-to-end bandwidth, which is allocated through congestion control policies such as TCP. Utility-based flow-level models have played an important role in understanding congestion control protocols. In summary, these two classes of models have provided separate insights for flow-level and packet-level dynamics of a network. In this paper, we wish to study these two dynamics together. We propose a joint flow-level and packet-level stochastic model for the dynamics of a network, and an associated policy for congestion control and packet scheduling that is based on alpha-weighted policies from the literature. We provide a fluid analysis for the model that establishes the throughput optimality of the proposed policy, thus validating prior insights based on separate packet-level and flow-level models. By analyzing a critically scaled fluid model under the proposed policy, we provide constant factor performance bounds on the delay performance and characterize the invariant states of the system. 2012-10-01T18:01:29Z 2012-10-01T18:01:29Z 2010-06 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 978-1-4503-0038-4 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73522 Ciamac Moallemi and Devavrat Shah. 2010. On the flow-level dynamics of a packet-switched network. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems (SIGMETRICS '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 83-94. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0737-3259 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1811099.1811050 Proceedings of the ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems (SIGMETRICS '10) Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) arXiv |
| spellingShingle | Moallemi, Ciamac C. Shah, Devavrat On the flow-level dynamics of a packet-switched network |
| title | On the flow-level dynamics of a packet-switched network |
| title_full | On the flow-level dynamics of a packet-switched network |
| title_fullStr | On the flow-level dynamics of a packet-switched network |
| title_full_unstemmed | On the flow-level dynamics of a packet-switched network |
| title_short | On the flow-level dynamics of a packet-switched network |
| title_sort | on the flow level dynamics of a packet switched network |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73522 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0737-3259 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT moallemiciamacc ontheflowleveldynamicsofapacketswitchednetwork AT shahdevavrat ontheflowleveldynamicsofapacketswitchednetwork |