A real-time scheduling framework for packet-switched networks

This paper develops a unified framework for reasoning about timing correctness of packet-switched networks. The unification is in the form of a set of consistent scheduling models for a variety of network architectures and protocols. The unification is important as it allows heterogeneous network types to be analyzed using a consistent methodology and facilitates scheduling over multihop networks where each link is a different type of network. To demonstrate the framework, a scheduling model for a dual-link network, IEEE 802.5 token ring, and FDDI, is presented. The use of this framework to select paths in multi-hop networks is also demonstrated