A Framework for Providing Stochastic Delay Guarantees in Communication Networks

The provisioning of delay guarantees in packet-switched networks such as the Internet remains an important, yet challenging open problem. We propose and evaluate a framework, based on results from stochastic network calculus, for guaranteeing stochastic bounds on network delay at a statistical multiplexer. The framework consists of phase-type traffic bounds and moment generating function traffic envelopes, stochastic traffic regulators to enforce the traffic bounds, and an admission control scheme to ensure that a stochastic delay bound is maintained for a given set of flows. Through numerical examples, we show that a stochastic delay bound is maintained at the multiplexer, and contrast the proposed framework to an approach based on deterministic network calculus.