PDR: A protocol for dynamic network reconfiguration based on deadlock recovery scheme

Dynamic network reconfiguration is described as the process of replacing one routing function with another while the network keeps running. The main challenge is avoiding deadlock anomalies while keeping limitations on packet injection and forwarding minimal. Current approaches which have a high complexity and as a result have a limited practical applicability either require the existence of extra network resources, or they will affect the network performance during the reconfiguration process. In this paper we present a simple, fast and efficient mechanism for dynamic network reconfiguration which is based on regressive deadlock recovery instead of avoiding deadlock. The mechanism which is referred to as PDR guarantees a deadlock-free reconfiguration based on wormhole switching. In PDR, a particular approach is taken to handle both deadlocks and performance degradation. We propose the use of a packet injection restriction mechanism that prevents performance degradation near the saturation by controlling the network traffic. Further, in this approach, to accurately detect deadlocks, the deadlock detection mechanism is implemented and also improved by using only the local information, thereby considerably reducing false deadlock detections. In the rare cases when deadlocks are suspected, we propose a new technique that absorbs the deadlocked packet at the current node instead of dropping deadlocked packets and re-injects it later into the network. The main advantage of this method is its simplicity and also it does not require any additional buffers in intermediate nodes to handle deadlocks. It requires only some buffer space in the local node to temporarily hold the deadlocked packets removed from the network. Evaluating results reveal that the mechanism shows substantial performance improvements over the other methods and it works efficiently in different topologies with various routing algorithms. 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.