The performance of scheduling algorithms, with a prospect of bandwidth overprovisioning

Between the two broad categories of packet scheduling algorithms, round robin and time stamp based schemes, the former is usually not considered a proper candidate for providing QoS guarantees. In this paper, we challenge such conventional wisdom by comparing them with a new and more balanced perspective. Taking the scheduler and the provisioning condition of a link as a whole, it is shown by extensive simulations that RR algorithms with a little bandwidth overprovisioning can usually beat TS ones. Considering the prospect of bandwidth overprovisioning, it is likely that the simpler round robin algorithm turns out to be more economic for the purpose of providing practical QoS guarantees.