The bursty nature of network traffic makes it difficult to characterize accurately, and may give rise to heavy-tailed queue distributions within the network. Building on prior work in stochastic network calculus, we propose traffic burstiness bounds based on the class of phase-type distributions and develop an approach to estimate the parameter of such bounds using the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. By limiting the tail of the burstiness bound, our approach achieves a better fit of the phase-type distribution to the empirical data from heavy-tailed traffic. The proposed tail-limited phase-type burstiness bounds fall within the framework for stochastic network calculus based on generalized stochastically bounded burstiness. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology with a numerical example involving a heavy-tailed M/G/1 queue.
more »
« less
Heavy-Traffic Insensitive Bounds for Weighted Proportionally Fair Bandwidth Sharing Policies
We consider a connection-level model proposed by Massoulié and Roberts for bandwidth sharing among file transfer flows in a communication network. We study weighted proportionally fair sharing policies and establish explicit-form bounds on the weighted sum of the expected numbers of flows on different routes in heavy traffic. The bounds are linear in the number of critically loaded links in the network, and they hold for a class of phase-type file-size distributions; that is, the bounds are heavy-traffic insensitive to the distributions in this class. Our approach is Lyapunov drift based, which is different from the widely used diffusion approximation approach. A key technique we develop is to construct a novel inner product in the state space, which then allows us to obtain a multiplicative type of state-space collapse in steady state. Furthermore, this state-space collapse result implies the interchange of limits as a byproduct for the diffusion approximation of the unweighted proportionally fair sharing policy under phase-type file-size distributions, demonstrating the heavy-traffic insensitivity of the stationary distribution.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1850439
- PAR ID:
- 10405999
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Mathematics of Operations Research
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0364-765X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2691 to 2720
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Network traffic is difficult to characterize due to its random, bursty nature. Even if a traffic source could be fit to a stochastic model with reasonable accuracy, analysis of end-to-end network performance metrics for such traffic models is generally intractable. In prior work, an approach to characterize traffic burstiness using a bound based on the class of phase-type distributions was proposed. Such phase-type bounds could be applied in conjunction with stochastic network calculus to derive probabilistic end-to-end delay bounds for a traffic stream. In this paper, we focus on the problem of estimating a tight phase-type burstiness bound for a given traffic trace. We investigate a method based on least squares and another based on the expectation-maximization algorithm. Our numerical results compare the two approaches in the scenario of a heavy-tailed M/G/1 queue. We find that while both methods are viable approaches for deriving phase-type bounds on traffic burstiness, the least squares approach performs better, particularly when a tail limit is imposed.more » « less
-
Evaluation of end-to-end network performance using realistic traffic models is a challenging problem in networking. The classical theory of queueing networks is feasible only under rather restrictive assumptions on the input traffic models and network elements. An alternative approach, first proposed in the late 1980s, is to impose deterministic bounds on the input traffic that can be used as a basis for a network calculus to compute end-to-end network delay bounds. Such deterministic bounds are inherently loose as they must accommodate worst case scenarios. Since the early 1990s, efforts have shifted to development of a stochastic network calculus to provide probabilistic end-to-end performance bounds. In this paper, we capitalize on the approach of stochastically bounded burstiness (SBB) which was developed for a general class of bounding functions, and was demonstrated for a bound that is based on a mixture distribution. We specialize the SBB bounds to bounds based on the class of phase-type distributions, which includes mixture distributions as a particular case. We develop the phase-type bounds and demonstrate their performance.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)This work concerns the asymptotic behavior of solutions to a (strictly) subcritical fluid model for a data communication network, where file sizes are generally distributed and the network operates under a fair bandwidth-sharing policy. Here we consider fair bandwidth-sharing policies that are a slight generalization of the [Formula: see text]-fair policies introduced by Mo and Walrand [Mo J, Walrand J (2000) Fair end-to-end window-based congestion control. IEEE/ACM Trans. Networks 8(5):556–567.]. Since the year 2000, it has been a standing problem to prove stability of the data communications network model of Massoulié and Roberts [Massoulié L, Roberts J (2000) Bandwidth sharing and admission control for elastic traffic. Telecommunication Systems 15(1):185–201.], with general file sizes and operating under fair bandwidth sharing policies, when the offered load is less than capacity (subcritical conditions). A crucial step in an approach to this problem is to prove stability of subcritical fluid model solutions. In 2012, Paganini et al. [Paganini F, Tang A, Ferragut A, Andrew LLH (2012) Network stability under alpha fair bandwidth allocation with general file size distribution. IEEE Trans. Automatic Control 57(3):579–591.] introduced a Lyapunov function for this purpose and gave an argument, assuming that fluid model solutions are sufficiently smooth in time and space that they are strong solutions of a partial differential equation and assuming that no fluid level on any route touches zero before all route levels reach zero. The aim of the current paper is to prove stability of the subcritical fluid model without these strong assumptions. Starting with a slight generalization of the Lyapunov function proposed by Paganini et al., assuming that each component of the initial state of a measure-valued fluid model solution, as well as the file size distributions, have no atoms and have finite first moments, we prove absolute continuity in time of the composition of the Lyapunov function with any subcritical fluid model solution and describe the associated density. We use this to prove that the Lyapunov function composed with such a subcritical fluid model solution converges to zero as time goes to infinity. This implies that each component of the measure-valued fluid model solution converges vaguely on [Formula: see text] to the zero measure as time goes to infinity. Under the further assumption that the file size distributions have finite pth moments for some p > 1 and that each component of the initial state of the fluid model solution has finite pth moment, it is proved that the fluid model solution reaches the measure with all components equal to the zero measure in finite time and that the time to reach this zero state has a uniform bound for all fluid model solutions having a uniform bound on the initial total mass and the pth moment of each component of the initial state. In contrast to the analysis of Paganini et al., we do not need their strong smoothness assumptions on fluid model solutions and we rigorously treat the realistic, but singular situation, where the fluid level on some routes becomes zero, whereas other route levels remain positive.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)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.more » « less
An official website of the United States government

