Priority queue schedulers with approximate sorting in output-buffered switches

All recently proposed packet-scheduling algorithms for output-buffered switches that support quality-of-service (QoS) transmit packets in some priority order, e.g., according to deadlines, virtual finishing times, eligibility times, or other time stamps that are associated with a packet. Since maintaining a sorted priority queue introduces significant overhead, much emphasis on QoS scheduler design is put on methods to simplify the task of maintaining a priority queue. In this paper, we consider an approach that attempts to approximate a sorted priority queue at an output-buffered switch. The goal is to trade off less accurate sorting for lower computational overhead. Specifically, this paper presents a scheduler that approximates the sorted queue of an earliest-deadline-first (EDF) scheduler. The approximate scheduler is implemented using a set of prioritized first-in/firstout (FIFO) queues that are periodically relabeled. The scheduler can be efficiently implemented with a fixed number of pointer manipulations, thus enabling an implementation in hardware. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the worst-case delays of the scheduler with approximate sorting are presented. Numerical examples, including traces based on MPEG video, demonstrate that in realistic scenarios, scheduling with approximate sorting is a viable option.