Performance Modeling for Communication Networks at a Switching Node

Network performance is investigated at an isolated node which we call the switching node (SN). An equal (outgoing) link utilization constraint is introduced to enhance the robustness of a minimum delay routing algorithm applied to the SN in the network. Input traffic to the SN is grouped into classes in accordance with the radial distance from the SN to their destinations. It is shown that under an equal link utilization constraint a four-class traffic admission scheme displays a smaller probability of buffer overflow compared to an unconstrained routing algorithm. Also, with the equal link utilization constraint, the buffer overflow characteristics are similar for both balanced and unbalanced loads. It is shown that the four-class traffic admission model exhibits an "almost" deadlock free characteristic, e.g., with a total buffer size of 4, the probability of deadlock is about 10
^-10
.