Pipeline Forwarding of Packets Based on a Low-Accuracy Network-Distributed Common Time Reference

Pipeline forwarding is a technology with the capability of providing both guaranteed quality of service (QoS) and scalability, two fundamental properties for the future Internet. Implementing pipeline forwarding requires network nodes to operate with a common time reference that, in existing literature, is considered to have relatively good accuracy and usually be derived from an external source, such as the GPS or Galileo. This is a major requirement possibly hindering the widespread deployment of this technology, notwithstanding its potential to enable a host of new applications. This paper describes and analyzes a solution for realizing pipeline forwarding based on a low-accuracy common time reference distributed through the network and presents experimental results obtained with a prototypal implementation of the proposed solution.