Providing QoS guarantees for unicast/multicast traffic with fixed/variable-length packets in multiple input-queued switches

With a deep understanding on the properties of stable matching in the context of multiple input-queued switches, we propose the efficient schemes to guarantee the QoS of any unicast and multicast traffic with fixed- or variable-length packets in an unified way. Using these schemes, the QoS of fixed- or variable-length unicast and multicast packets can be guaranteed by independently employing suitable service disciplines at the packets´ destined outputs like what is being done in an output queueing switch. One of our proposed schemes uses totally 4N input/output buffers, each with an internal speed-up of 2 independent of N, for an N×N switch to support any fixed- or variable-length multicast and unicast packets with QoS guarantees