Supporting Time-Sensitive and Best-Effort Traffic on a Common Metro Infrastructure

Considerable research and standardization efforts are being made to support time-sensitive traffic, e.g., generated by applications like Industry 4.0 and 5G fronthaul, on packet networks. This letter focuses on analyzing the impact of conveying time-sensitive traffic in operators' networks when such traffic is mixed with best-effort traffic. Extensions to a continuous G/G/1/k queue model are proposed to evaluate two different Ethernet technologies, synchronous and asynchronous, supporting time-sensitive flows in terms of their influence on the performance of best-effort traffic. Results highlight pros and cons of those technologies to protect best-effort performance.