Packet mode and QoS algorithms for buffered crossbar switches with FIFO queuing

The buffered crossbar switch architecture has recently gained considerable research attention. In such a switch, besides normal input and output queues, a small buffer is associated with each crosspoint. Due to the introduction of crossbar buffers, output and input contention is eliminated, and the scheduling process is greatly simplified. We analyze the performance of switch policies by means of competitive analysis, where a uniform guarantee is provided for all traffic patterns. We assume that each packet has an intrinsic value designating its priority and the goal of the switch policy is to maximize the weighted throughput of the switch. We consider FIFO queueing buffering policies, which are deployed by the majority of today's Internet routers. In packet-mode scheduling, a packet is divided into a number of unit length cells and the scheduling policy is constrained to schedule all the cells contiguously, which removes reassembly overhead and improves Quality-of-Service (QoS). For the case of variable length packets with uniform value density (Best Effort model), where the packet value is proportional to its size, we present a packet-mode greedy switch policy that is 7-competitive. For the case of unit size packets with variable values (Differentiated Services model), we propose a preemptive greedy switch policy that achieves a competitive ratio of 21. As far as we know, this is the first constant competitive FIFO policy for this architecture in the case of variable value packets. The presented policies are simple and thus can be efficiently implemented at high speeds. Moreover, our results hold for any value of the internal switch fabric speedup.