FIFO Queueing Policies for Packets with Heterogeneous Processing

TL;DR

This paper studies FIFO queue management policies for packets requiring multiple processing rounds, aiming to maximize throughput, with theoretical guarantees and simulation validation for push-out and non-push-out scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces analytical performance guarantees for FIFO queue policies handling heterogeneous packet processing requirements, including push-out strategies.

Findings

Algorithms achieve provable throughput bounds.

Simulation confirms theoretical predictions.

Push-out policies outperform non-push-out in throughput.

Abstract

We consider the problem of managing a bounded size First-In-First-Out (FIFO) queue buffer, where each incoming unit-sized packet requires several rounds of processing before it can be transmitted out. Our objective is to maximize the total number of successfully transmitted packets. We consider both push-out (when the policy is permitted to drop already admitted packets) and non-push-out cases. In particular, we provide analytical guarantees for the throughput performance of our algorithms. We further conduct a comprehensive simulation study which experimentally validates the predicted theoretical behaviour.