Applying in-transit buffers to boost the performance of networks with source routing

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze in depth the effect of using ITB in the network, showing that they not only serve for guaranteeing minimal routing, but also that they are a powerful mechanism able to balance network traffic and reduce network contention. To demonstrate these capabilities, we apply the ITB mechanism to improved routing schemes, such as DFS and smart-routing. These routing algorithms (without ITB) are able to improve the performance of up*/down* by 30 percent and 90 percent, respectively, for a 32-switch network. The evaluation results show that, when ITB are used together with these improved routing algorithms, network throughput achieved by DFS and smart-routing can still be improved by 56 percent and 23 percent, respectively. However, smart-routing requires a time to compute the routing tables that rapidly grows with network size, it being impossible in practice to build networks with more than 32 switches. This high computational cost is mainly motivated by the need of obtaining deadlock-free routing tables. However, when ITB are used, one can decouple the stages of computing routing tables and breaking cycles. Moreover, as stated above, ITB can be used to reduce network contention. In this way, in this paper, we also propose a completely new routing algorithm that tries to balance network traffic by using a simple and low time consuming strategy. The proposed algorithm guarantees deadlock freedom and reduces network contention with the use of ITB. The evaluation results show that our algorithm obtains unprecedented throughputs in 32-switch networks, tripling the original up*/down* and almost doubling smart-routing.