Bounded Delay Packet Scheduling in a Bounded Buffer

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple deterministic algorithm with a 2-competitive ratio for buffer management in QoS network switches with a single buffer, improving the efficiency of packet scheduling under bounded delay constraints.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new simple deterministic algorithm that achieves a 2-competitive ratio for single-buffer packet scheduling, enhancing previous results.

Findings

Deterministic 2-competitive algorithm for single buffer

Improved performance over previous algorithms

Applicable to QoS-enabled network switches

Abstract

We study the problem of buffer management in QoS-enabled network switches in the bounded delay model where each packet is associated with a weight and a deadline. We consider the more realistic situation where the network switch has a finite buffer size. A 9.82-competitive algorithm is known for the case of multiple buffers (Azar and Levy, SWAT'06). Recently, for the case of a single buffer, a 3-competitive deterministic algorithm and a 2.618-competitive randomized algorithm was known (Li, INFOCOM'09). In this paper we give a simple deterministic 2-competitive algorithm for the case of a single buffer.