Evaluation and Analysis of the Sliding-Window Parallel Packet Switch

Abstract

This work analyzes the performance of the parallel packet switch (PPS) with a sliding window (SW) method under bursty data traffic. The PPS comprises multiple packet switches operating independently and in parallel. The typical PPS dispatch algorithm uses a round-robin method (RR) (Iyer, 2003). The class of PPS is characterized by deployment of parallel center-stage switches that all memory buffers run slower than the external line rate. A novel SW packet switching method for PPS, called SW-PPS, is proposed. Under identical bursty data traffic, the SW-PPS provided improved performance when compared to RR-PPS. A mathematical, analytical model for SW-PPS is proposed. In addition, a novel bursty data traffic model is proposed: a packet-based bursty data traffic model. This packet-based bursty data traffic model can emulate more realistic network, and thus, produces more realistic simulation results.