Providing Service Guarantees in High-Speed Switching Systems with Feedback Output Queuing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel high-speed packet switch architecture that ensures service guarantees, reduces complexity, and is scalable, by combining a cost-effective fabric with a feedback mechanism to prevent packet loss.

Contribution

A new scalable switch architecture with feedback output queuing that provides service guarantees efficiently and with low complexity.

Findings

Supports large number of flows with independent guarantees

Achieves near lossless performance with feedback mechanism

Scalable to very high port speeds

Abstract

We consider the problem of providing service guarantees in a high-speed packet switch. As basic requirements, the switch should be scalable to high speeds per port, a large number of ports and a large number of traffic flows with independent guarantees. Existing scalable solutions are based on Virtual Output Queuing, which is computationally complex when required to provide service guarantees for a large number of flows. We present a novel architecture for packet switching that provides support for such service guarantees. A cost-effective fabric with small external speedup is combined with a feedback mechanism that enables the fabric to be virtually lossless, thus avoiding packet drops indiscriminate of flows. Through analysis and simulation, we show that this architecture provides accurate support for service guarantees, has low computational complexity and is scalable to very high port speeds.