Meta-QoS performance of earliest-deadline-first and rate-monotonic scheduling of smoothed video data in a client-server environment

In this paper we present an extensive performance study of two modified EDF and RM scheduling algorithms which are enhanced to provide quality of service (QoS) guarantees for smoothed video data. With a probabilistic definition of QoS, we incorporate admission control conditions into the two algorithms. Furthermore, we also include a counter-based scheduling module as the core scheduling mechanism which adaptively adjusts the actual QoS levels assigned to requests. Our theoretical analysis of the two enhanced algorithms, called QEDF and QRM, shows that the QRM algorithm is more robust than the QEDF algorithm for different workload and utilization conditions. We also propose to use a new metric called meta-QoS to quantify the overall performance of a packet scheduler given a set of simultaneous requests. In our experiments, we find that the QRM algorithm can sustain a rather stable level of meta-QoS even when the workload and utilization levels are increased. On the other hand, the QEDF algorithm is found to be less desirable for a high level of utilization and a large number of requests.