ASYMPTOTIC MAXIMUM PACKET SWITCH THROUGHPUT UNDER NONUNIFORM TRAFFIC

Packet switch is a key component in high speed digital networks. This paper investigates congestion phenomena in the packet switching with input buffers. For large value of switch size N, mathematical models have been developed to analyze asymptotic maximum switch throughput under nonuniform traffic. Simulation study has also been done for small values of finite N. The rapid convergence of the switch performance with finite switch size to asymptotic solutions implies that asymptotic analytical solutions approximate very closely to maximum throughputs for reasonably large but finite N. Numerical examples show that non-uniformity in traffic pattern could result in serious degradation in packet switch performance, while the maximum switch throughput is 0.586 when the traffic load is uniform over the output trunks. Window scheduling policy seems to work only when the traffic is relatively uniformly distributed. As traffic non-uniformity increases, the effect of window size on throughput is getting mediocre.