Scheduling and routing of real-time multimedia traffic in packet-switched networks

The authors address the problem of transmission scheduling and buffer management at a switch in a high-speed packet-switched network. Future computer networks are expected to carry bursty real time multimedia traffic with specific time-delay requirements. We propose a technique to schedule competing packets at a switch in a packet-switched network with two objectives: (i) maximizing the number of packets that would reach their destination before their deadline has been reached; (ii) minimizing the number of packets dropped in transit in the network. The method is broadly based on the popular least-laxity heuristic in real time process scheduling and is combined with buffer management at the switch.