A cost-based scheduling algorithm to support integrated services

Abstract

Heuristic scheduling and dropping algorithms are presented for improving the efficiency of single packet-switched networks with diverse traffic. In the authors approach, arbitrary performance objectives are defined in the form of cost functions, which map the queueing delay experienced by each packet to a cost incurred. The algorithms, cost-based scheduling (CBS) and cost-based dropping (CBD), then attempt to optimize network performance as perceived by the applications by minimizing the total cost incurred by all packets. Cost functions are presented that are appropriate for the most common applications. Scheduling and dropping algorithms are defined based on these cost functions. It is demonstrated that network performance is better when these heuristic algorithms are used as opposed to the common alternatives. The relative importance of scheduling and dropping is also considered.