Utilizing path dynamics for delay assurance in synchronized multihop scheduling

Supporting real time traffic on the Internet has always been a challenge due to undesired network dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a synchronized routing architecture to address this issue from a new perspective. As routers are synchronized in time, we can easily find accurate upstream delays. When we can also obtain downstream delays with a measurement framework, we can then determine the dynamic service priority for a packet at a hop to speed up or slow down as necessary, to enable efficient resource sharing among multiple flows across different paths. Consequently, we can achieve better overall system performance without making explicit reservations for each flow. Assume we have the downstream measurement framework in hand, in this paper, we focus on synchronized multi-hop scheduling schemes and illustrate its basic capacity via both analysis and simulation.