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This paper investigates the benefits of traffic reprofiling for delivering hard delay guarantees in packet networks using static priority and FIFO schedulers. They formulate a joint optimization framework to proactively shape flows entering the network, aiming to minimize bandwidth usage while meeting delay constraints. Evaluations on realistic and synthetic topologies demonstrate that reprofiling improves delay guarantees, and that the effectiveness of complex reprofiling solutions is coupled with the scheduler's capabilities.
Reprofiling network traffic isn't just for fancy schedulers – even simple FIFO and static priority setups can see significant bandwidth savings while guaranteeing hard delays.
Delivering hard delay guarantees over packet networks is increasingly important to applications ranging from automotive systems, avionics, industrial control, etc. Traffic control and schedulers play an essential role in enforcing such guarantees. In this paper, we focus on ``simple''static priority and FIFO schedulers, and explore how reprofiling flows entering the network, i.e., proactively shaping them to a different traffic profile, can deliver delay guarantees with less bandwidth. To that end, we formulate a joint optimization framework and develop efficient algorithms to solve it. Extensive evaluations across both realistic and synthetic topologies demonstrate that, as with more sophisticated schedulers, reprofiling flows is beneficial. They also highlight an intuitive coupling between a scheduler's capability and its ability to leverage more complex reprofiling solutions.
