Energy-Delay Tradeoffs in a Load-Balanced Router

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the energy-delay tradeoffs in load-balanced routers, showing how turning off components can save energy while maintaining acceptable queue and delay performance through probabilistic bounds.

Contribution

It provides a detailed probabilistic analysis of queue and delay performance in load-balanced routers, highlighting energy savings potential with simple random routing.

Findings

Probabilistic bounds for queue size and delay decrease exponentially

Energy savings achievable by turning off components during low traffic

Tradeoff between energy consumption and performance metrics

Abstract

The Load-Balanced Router architecture has received a lot of attention because it does not require centralized scheduling at the internal switch fabrics. In this paper we reexamine the architecture, motivated by its potential to turn off multiple components and thereby conserve energy in the presence of low traffic. We perform a detailed analysis of the queue and delay performance of a Load-Balanced Router under a simple random routing algorithm. We calculate probabilistic bounds for queue size and delay, and show that the probabilities drop exponentially with increasing queue size or delay. We also demonstrate a tradeoff in energy consumption against the queue and delay performance.