Practical scheduling algorithms for high-performance packet switches

As buffer-less scheduling algorithms reach their practical limitations due to higher port numbers and data rates, buffered crossbars gained a lot of interest recently because of the great potential they have in solving the complexity and scalability issues faced by their buffer-less predecessors. In particular, the internally buffered switching architecture was shown, through distributed scheduling algorithms, to be able to sustain the current and expected increases in Internet throughput rates. In this paper, we propose a class of distributed scheduling algorithms for the internally buffered crossbar switching architecture. As will be shown, the distributed nature of these algorithms makes them of high practical value. That is, they can be implemented in real-time for high-speed input traffic. In addition, we will demonstrate, through simulation, that these scheduling algorithms outperform state-of-the-art related algorithms in this area.