396 research outputs found
Fluid models of congestion collapse in overloaded switched networks
We consider a switched network (i.e. a queueing network in which there are constraints on which queues may be served simultaneously), in a state of overload. We analyse the behaviour of two scheduling algorithms for multihop switched networks: a generalized version of max-weight, and the α-fair policy. We show that queue sizes grow linearly with time, under either algorithm, and we characterize the growth rates. We use this characterization to demonstrate examples of congestion
collapse, i.e. cases in which throughput drops as the switched network becomes more overloaded.We further show that the loss of throughput can be made arbitrarily small by the max-weight algorithm with weight function f (q) = q[superscript α] as α→0.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Career CNS-0546590
A Switching Fluid Limit of a Stochastic Network Under a State-Space-Collapse Inducing Control with Chattering
Routing mechanisms for stochastic networks are often designed to produce
state space collapse (SSC) in a heavy-traffic limit, i.e., to confine the
limiting process to a lower-dimensional subset of its full state space. In a
fluid limit, a control producing asymptotic SSC corresponds to an ideal sliding
mode control that forces the fluid trajectories to a lower-dimensional sliding
manifold. Within deterministic dynamical systems theory, it is well known that
sliding-mode controls can cause the system to chatter back and forth along the
sliding manifold due to delays in activation of the control. For the prelimit
stochastic system, chattering implies fluid-scaled fluctuations that are larger
than typical stochastic fluctuations. In this paper we show that chattering can
occur in the fluid limit of a controlled stochastic network when inappropriate
control parameters are used. The model has two large service pools operating
under the fixed-queue-ratio with activation and release thresholds (FQR-ART)
overload control which we proposed in a recent paper. We now show that, if the
control parameters are not chosen properly, then delays in activating and
releasing the control can cause chattering with large oscillations in the fluid
limit. In turn, these fluid-scaled fluctuations lead to severe congestion, even
when the arrival rates are smaller than the potential total service rate in the
system, a phenomenon referred to as congestion collapse. We show that the fluid
limit can be a bi-stable switching system possessing a unique nontrivial
periodic equilibrium, in addition to a unique stationary point
Fairness in overloaded parallel queues
Maximizing throughput for heterogeneous parallel server queues has received
quite a bit of attention from the research community and the stability region
for such systems is well understood. However, many real-world systems have
periods where they are temporarily overloaded. Under such scenarios, the
unstable queues often starve limited resources. This work examines what happens
during periods of temporary overload. Specifically, we look at how to fairly
distribute stress. We explore the dynamics of the queue workloads under the
MaxWeight scheduling policy during long periods of stress and discuss how to
tune this policy in order to achieve a target fairness ratio across these
workloads
Concave Switching in Single and Multihop Networks
Switched queueing networks model wireless networks, input queued switches and
numerous other networked communications systems. For single-hop networks, we
consider a {()-switch policy} which combines the MaxWeight policies
with bandwidth sharing networks -- a further well studied model of Internet
congestion. We prove the maximum stability property for this class of
randomized policies. Thus these policies have the same first order behavior as
the MaxWeight policies. However, for multihop networks some of these
generalized polices address a number of critical weakness of the
MaxWeight/BackPressure policies.
For multihop networks with fixed routing, we consider the Proportional
Scheduler (or (1,log)-policy). In this setting, the BackPressure policy is
maximum stable, but must maintain a queue for every route-destination, which
typically grows rapidly with a network's size. However, this proportionally
fair policy only needs to maintain a queue for each outgoing link, which is
typically bounded in number. As is common with Internet routing, by maintaining
per-link queueing each node only needs to know the next hop for each packet and
not its entire route. Further, in contrast to BackPressure, the Proportional
Scheduler does not compare downstream queue lengths to determine weights, only
local link information is required. This leads to greater potential for
decomposed implementations of the policy. Through a reduction argument and an
entropy argument, we demonstrate that, whilst maintaining substantially less
queueing overhead, the Proportional Scheduler achieves maximum throughput
stability.Comment: 28 page
Stochastic Systems ACHIEVING RAPID RECOVERY IN AN OVERLOAD CONTROL FOR LARGE-SCALE SERVICE SYSTEMS
We consider an automatic overload control for two large service systems modeled as multi-server queues, such as call centers. We assume that the two systems are designed to operate independently, but want to help each other respond to unexpected overloads. The proposed overload control automatically activates sharing (sending some customers from one system to the other) once a ratio of the queue lengths in the two systems crosses an activation threshold (with ratio and activation threshold parameters for each direction). To prevent harmful sharing, sharing is allowed in only one direction at any time. In this paper, we are primarily concerned with ensuring that the system recovers rapidly after the overload is over, either (i) because the two systems return to normal loading or (ii) because the direction of the overload suddenly shifts in the opposite direction. To achieve rapid recovery, we introduce lower thresholds for the queue ratios, below which one-way sharing is released. As a basis for studyin
Receiver-Based Flow Control for Networks in Overload
We consider utility maximization in networks where the sources do not employ
flow control and may consequently overload the network. In the absence of flow
control at the sources, some packets will inevitably have to be dropped when
the network is in overload. To that end, we first develop a distributed,
threshold-based packet dropping policy that maximizes the weighted sum
throughput. Next, we consider utility maximization and develop a receiver-based
flow control scheme that, when combined with threshold-based packet dropping,
achieves the optimal utility. The flow control scheme creates virtual queues at
the receivers as a push-back mechanism to optimize the amount of data delivered
to the destinations via back-pressure routing. A novel feature of our scheme is
that a utility function can be assigned to a collection of flows, generalizing
the traditional approach of optimizing per-flow utilities. Our control policies
use finite-buffer queues and are independent of arrival statistics. Their
near-optimal performance is proved and further supported by simulation results.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, 5 tables, preprint submitted to IEEE INFOCOM
201
Queueing Delay Minimization in Overloaded Networks via Rate Control
We develop link rate control policies to minimize the queueing delay of
packets in overloaded networks. We show that increasing link rates does not
guarantee delay reduction during overload. We consider a fluid queueing model
that facilitates explicit characterization of the queueing delay of packets,
and establish explicit conditions on link rates that can minimize the average
and maximum queueing delay in both single-hop and multi-stage (switching)
networks. These min-delay conditions require maintaining an identical ratio
between the ingress and egress rates of different nodes at the same layer of
the network. We term the policies that follow these conditions
rate-proportional policies. We further generalize the rate-proportional
policies to queue-proportional policies, which minimize the queueing delay
asymptotically based on the time-varying queue length while remaining agnostic
of packet arrival rates. We validate that the proposed policies lead to minimum
queueing delay under various network topologies and settings, compared with
benchmarks including the backpressure policy that maximizes network throughput
and the max-link-rate policy that fully utilizes bandwidth. We further remark
that the explicit min-delay policy design in multi-stage networks facilitates
co-optimization with other metrics, such as minimizing total bandwidth,
balancing link utilization and node buffer usage. This demonstrates the wider
utility of our main results in data center network optimization in practice
Proportional switching in FIFO networks
We consider a family of discrete time multihop switched queueing networks where each packet movesalong a xed route. In this setting, BackPressure is the canonical choice of scheduling policy; this policy hasthe virtues of possessing a maximal stability region and not requiring explicit knowledge of tra c arrival rates.BackPressure has certain structural weaknesses because implementation requires information about each route,and queueing delays can grow super-linearly with route length. For large networks, where packets over manyroutes are processed by a queue, or where packets over a route are processed by many queues, these limitationscan be prohibitive.In this article, we introduce a scheduling policy for FIFO networks, the Proportional Scheduler, which isbased on the proportional fairness criterion. We show that, like BackPressure, the Proportional Scheduler hasa maximal stability region and does not require explicit knowledge of tra c arrival rates. The ProportionalScheduler has the advantage that information about the network's route structure is not required for scheduling,which substantially improves the policy's performance for large networks. For instance, packets can be routedwith only next-hop information and new nodes can be added to the network with only knowledge of thescheduling constraintsThe research of the rst author was partially supported by NSF grants DMS-1105668 and DMS-1203201.
The research of the second author was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Grants
MTM2013-42104-P via FEDER funds; he thanks the ICMAT (Madrid, Spain) Research Institute that kindly hosted him while
developing this project
Proportional Switching in First-in, First-out Networks
We consider a family of discrete time multihop switched queueing networks where each packet moves along a fixed route. In this setting, BackPressure is the canonical choice of scheduling policy; this policy has the virtues of possessing a maximal stability region and not requiring explicit knowledge of traffic arrival rates. BackPressure has certain structural weaknesses because implementation requires information about each route, and queueing delays can grow super-linearly with route length. For large networks, where packets over many routes are processed by a queue, or where packets over a route are processed by many queues, these limitations can be prohibitive. In this article, we introduce a scheduling policy for first-in, first-out networks, the ProportionalScheduler, which is based on the proportional fairness criterion. We show that, like BackPressure, the ProportionalScheduler has a maximal stability region and does not require explicit knowledge of traffic arrival rates. The ProportionalScheduler has the advantage that information about the network's route structure is not required for scheduling, which substantially improves the policy's performance for large networks. For instance, packets can be routed with only next-hop information and new nodes can be added to the network with only knowledge of the scheduling constraints
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