Partial Sharing and Partial Partitioning Buffer Management Scheme for Shared Buffer Packet Switches

In a shared buffer packet switch, a good buffer management scheme is needed to reduce the overall packet loss probability and improve the fairness between different users. In this paper, a novel buffer control scheme called partial sharing and partial partitioning (PSPP) is proposed. The PSPP is an adaptive scheme that can be dynamically adjusted to the changing traffic conditions while simple to implement. The key idea of the PSPP is that part of the buffer space, proportional to the number of inactive output ports, is reserved for sharing between inactive output ports. This portion of buffer is called PS buffer. The residual buffer space, called PP buffer, is partitioned and distributed to active output ports equally. From the analysis results, we only need to reserve a small amount of PS buffer space to get good performance for the entire system. Computer simulation shows the PSPP control is very robust and very close to the performance of pushout (PO) buffer management scheme which is a scheme considered as optimal in terms of fairness and total loss ratio while too complicated for implementation. key words: partial sharing, partial partitioning, pushout