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 Real Time Communication over Ethernet using Traffic

Smoothing with Neural Networks
Prasant Kumar Pattnaik
Department of CSE, KIST,Bhubaneswar

Rajib Mall,
Department of CSE, IIT, Kharagpur

Gurashish Singh Brar

Department of CSE, IIT, Kharagpur

Abstract—This paper provides an improvement over a methodology for providing Real Time Communication over Ethernet without
changing the existing hardware. We use Neural Networks to forecast the Ethernet Traffic and use this prediction with adaptive traffic
smoothing to give better statistical guaranty for Real Time Data. The Traffic Smoothing module installed at each station, smoothes the
non real time traffic enforcing a link rate over the non real time traffic. The prediction for the coming Ethernet utilization obtained
from the Neural Networks is used to vary the link rate for each station.

Index Terms—Real Time Communication, Traffic Smoothing, Neural Networks.

throughput, the traffic-generation rate is allowed to adapt

I. INTRODUCTION
Ethernet continues to be one of the most popular LAN
technologies. Due to the low price and robustness resulting
from its wide acceptance and deployment, there has been an
attempt to build Ethernet-based real-time control networks
for manufacturing automation.
However, it is difficult to build a real-time control network
using the standard UDP or TCP/IP and Ethernet, because
the Ethernet MAC protocol, the 1-persistent CSMA/CD
protocol, has unpredictable delay characteristics. When
both real-time (RT) and non-real-time packets are
transported over an ordinary Ethernet LAN, RT packets
from a node may experience a large delay due to (i)
contention with non-RT packets in the originating node and
(ii) collision with RT and non-RT packets from the other
nodes. Attempts have been made to provide the Real Time
communication over Ethernet. Some techniques which try
not to hassle with the hardware involved and provide a
software solution have been suggested. The approaches fall
into two broad categories Token based protocols & Traffic
Smoothing. In the Traffic Smoothing approach, described
in [1] and [2], traffic smoother is installed between the
TCP/IP layer and the Ethernet MAC layer, and works as an
interface between them. The traffic smoother first gives
real-time (RT) packets priority over non-RT ones in order
to eliminate contention within the local node. It smoothes
the non-RT stream to reduce collision with RT packets
from the other nodes. This traffic smoothing can
dramatically decrease the packet-collision ratio on the
network. In order to provide a reasonable non-RT
itself to the underlying network load condition. We use
Neural Networks to predict the Ethernet Traffic utilization
and use the prediction to vary the Non RT traffic entering
the system.
II. FORECASTING ETHERNET TRAFFIC
The Traffic Smoothing techniques used for providing a soft
Real Time Communication over Ethernet assumed nothing
about the traffic pattern. The closest they come to dealing
with the Traffic pattern is in the Adaptive Traffic
smoothing where the Refresh period for the tokens is
adjusted depending upon the occurrence of collisions. We
have shown that the Ethernet Traffic can be predicted to a
reasonable degree of accuracy. This prediction can be used
with the Smoothing algorithm to obtain a better
performance. A Three Layered Neural Network model was
used, with the following configuration:
 Layer1: 25 Neurons, AF: H-tangent
 Layer2: 15 Neurons, AF: Sigmoidal
 Layer3: 1 Neuron, AF: Sigmoidal
 Inputs: 40
 Outputs: 1
The experiment was conducted on the traces of Ethernet
Traffic, collected at Bellcore Morristown Research and
Engineering facility [3]. The total trace consists of over 3
million samples taken on Aug 29, October 3, and October
5, 1989. The trace contains the Ethernet data length at each
sample and the time at which they were taken. The Neural
Network was trained using the Back Propagation
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Algorithm. The input consisted of 40 consecutive samples
and then next sample was the supervised output. The idea
was to use the past traffic behavior of the Ethernet Traffic
to get a prediction of the future Traffic Pattern.
The Neural Network was trained offline on an 866 MHz
Pentium III machine in the order of minutes. Fig. 1. shows
the results of the offline training. Although Fig. 1. shows
Fig. 1. Results with offline training of Neural Network on the Bellcore Ethernet Traces, Red plot shows the actual Trace and the green Plot is the predicted
traffic.
Fig. 2. Traffic predicted with the offline trained Neural Network of Fig. 1.
Obviously this approach is not feasible because the offline
trained network looses its utility in a short period. The
excessive timings involved in the offline training render it
useless when consider from the point of view of application
to the Smoothing algorithm, where the next prediction will
be expected in order of milliseconds rather than hours.
The next obvious solution to this is to go for an online
training. The idea is to keep the training process a
continuous one and to keep updating the training set as time
progresses with new data and removing the older data.
Whenever the Neural Network is trained to an acceptable
level of accuracy the new weights are used to get the next
predictions. The model used consisted of three independent
processes:
 Traffic monitor
 Trainer
 Predictor
The three processes are connected through pipes,
connecting Traffic Monitor and Trainer, Traffic Monitor
and Predictor, Trainer and Predictor.
The Traffic Monitor samples the Ethernet at a predefined
rate. In this experiment the Traffic monitor simply took the
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that the Neural Network has been trained fairly well on the
given sample, but this figure is misleading because when
the same Network is used to predict the next 500 samples
without any further training the prediction is not all that
good. Fig. 2. shows the prediction obtained with the offline
trained Neural Network over the next 500 Bellcore
samples.
next sample from the Bellcore traces at regular intervals. It
builds two set of patterns from these traces, one is a
training pattern and the other is traffic pattern. The Training
pattern consists of the last 41 samples taken, i.e. 40 samples
for the input and the current sample as the supervised
output. This pattern is sent to the Trainer through the Pipe
connecting them. The Traffic pattern consists of the last 40
samples including the current sample as the input for
predictor. The Traffic pattern is sent to the Predictor.
The Trainer keeps a stock of last 500 patterns provided
to it by the Traffic Monitor and trains a Neural Network
with same configuration as used in the offline Neural
Network. The Trainer continuously sends an update on
weights of the Neural Network to the Predictor through the
Pipe connecting them, at regular intervals.
The Predictor has a Neural Network which is updated
whenever it receives new weights from the Trainer. It uses
the Traffic Pattern obtained from the Traffic Monitor to get
a new prediction.
Fig. 3. shows the results obtained with the online training
experiment. The prediction in this case is relatively accurate
when compared with the offline case.
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Fig. 3. Results obtained with the online training of the Neural Network.
Further improvement in this regard is to use the idea of
look ahead. Instead of using the sample, immediately
following the input set, as a supervised output in the
training we use Tth sample after the input set for training.
So while predicting instead of getting the immediate future
Fig. 4. Predicting Tth sample instead of the immediate next.
I. MODIFIED SMOOTHING ALGORITHM
The new algorithm is almost similar to the one described
in [1] and [2]. A buffer is still maintained where packets
received by the Smoother are stored, a credit bucket is kept
and packets are delivered in the same manner as in the
earlier algorithm. The credits can become negative and thus
the property of allowing a peak and penalizing the future
deliveries is still kept. The only difference between the new
algorithm and the one used earlier is that instead of having
a refresh period, during which the credit bucket is fully
replenished, the credits in the bucket are updated at regular
intervals by Ф which is computed from the predicted traffic
utilization. The value of Ф can be negative also, so at the
end of the period the credits instead of being fully
replenished can in fact be further decreased. However a
window is maintained in which the credits remain, i.e. an
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sample we get the prediction for Tth sample in the future.
This gives us an extra time equal to T*sampling rate for
training. Fig. 4. illustrates this concept.
upper positive bound and a lower negative bound is
maintained.
The Neural Network module is invoked at regular
intervals; at each invocation it checks the total time for
which the Ethernet was idle during the previous interval.
Let φ = Total idle time/ Period , be the Ethernet idle
fraction, so if φ is equal to 1 this means the Ethernet is
lying completely idle and if φ = 0 then the Ethernet is over
loaded. Neural Network Module maintains a working set of
previously computed φs, from which it generates the
current training set and the input pattern for the next
prediction. At every invocation the Neural Network module
uses the current input pattern to get the next prediction, let
ψ be the next prediction. Based on the ψ the value of credit
update Ф is computed using the following equation:
Ф = {ψ<NF | -TD*(1-(ψ/NF) Ns) 1/Ns }
(1)
{ψ>=NF | TI*(1-(1+NF)*(1-ψPs) 1/Ps) }
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Where NF (Negative Factor) is the value of ψ below which
the Ethernet is considered as over loaded and the credit
buckets of all nodes need to be penalized. TD (Token
Decrement) is the maximum amount by which the credits
can be penalized, in other words TD is the lower bound for
Ф. TI (Token Increment) is maximum amount by which the
credits can be replenished, or the upper bound for Ф. Ns is
the slope for the negative curve. Ps is the slope of the
positive curve.
The Ф is simply added to the credits making certain that
the number of credits remain in the window bounded by the
Max Credits ( Credit Bucket Depth) as described in the
earlier Algorithm and Min Credits ( the lower bound on
number of credits).
The algorithm used earlier in case of static smoothing
made no assumption about the traffic pattern, and didn’t
care if the Ethernet was being overloaded or underutilized
as a result the Throughput suffered. To improve this
situation the Adaptive traffic smoothing made a very basic
assumption regarding the traffic pattern, it used the past
traffic behavior to get a better idea of the future patterns. If
there was no collision than it assumed that the Ethernet was
being underutilized so it decreased the refresh period.
However if there was a collision than it concluded that the
Ethernet was being overloaded since due to BEB a collision
may result in another collision after 2τ ( τ being the max
transmission) with a probability of 0.5. So it increased the
Refresh period. However the change in the refresh period
will be reflected after a delay equal to the refresh period.
Since the information available to this algorithm about the
future traffic behavior is very inadequate and not reliable so
the above approach is taken, that is very pessimistic.
In our case the Neural Network provides a prediction of
the coming behavior of Ethernet to a reasonable degree of
accuracy, and changing the Refresh period using the
prediction doesn’t have much effect because the prediction
is about the immediate future where as the effect will be felt
much later. In fact this can have a negative impact.
Consider the case where P is the period after which the
Neural Network is invoked and say at time t the Neural
Network is invoked and it predicts that the Ethernet is
going to be overloaded in the next period. Based on this
information we increase the refresh period to reduce traffic
load, now suppose earlier Refresh period was greater than P
itself, then this prediction has no effect because in the
coming period we are making no changes to the traffic
load. Now consider the period following the next one. The
effect of last prediction will be felt in this period. If the
Ethernet is underutilized in this period than our prediction
will be having a negative impact, because the traffic load is
reduced when it should have been increased.
The essence of the above discussion was to illustrate
that the model used earlier reacts slowly to changes
suggested to it which can have a negative impact on
throughput and Real Time Packet Loss ratio when used
with Neural Network. What is needed is a mechanism
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which can react immediately and effectively to the
changing Traffic loads. The solution to the above problem
is to do away with the idea of having a refresh period and
to manage the Credits in the Credit bucket directly based on
the prediction. So if the Neural Network predicts that the
Ethernet is going to be heavily overloaded during the next
period, the Credit Buckets of all nodes can be immediately
penalized and the effect will be felt immediately after the
minimum initial delay ( depends upon how long it takes to
clear the NIC Buffer) which is beyond the scope of
Smoother.
The next issue is how to change the Credits in the Credit
Bucket to get an effective response. As described earlier we
have used (1) to obtain the amount of change in Credits Ф
based on the prediction of traffic load ψ. It is easy to
understand that if the Ethernet is going to be heavily
overloaded in the coming future we must decrease the
Traffic load by as much as possible. To do this we need to
reduce the Credits. So the parameter NF is introduced in the
equation, if the value of ψ < NF then this means that the
Ethernet is going to be overloaded, so the first part of the
equation returns a negative value. On the other hand if ψ
>NF then it is assumed that the Ethernet is going to be
underutilized and thus the credits should be increased
which is done by the 2nd part of the equation, by returning
a positive value. For ψ=NF we assume that the Ethernet is
ideally utilized and no change to the Credit Bucket is made.
Since the only thing about the function f, where Ф=f(ψ),
that we know is that it should be monotonically increasing
and it should not be flat over any range. So (1) is used
which represents a general monotonically increasing curve
without any flat regions, and which can take the shape of
linear as well as Step function.
II. TESTBENCH
Traffic Smoothing to be effective in providing Real time
Communication requires that the Smoothing module should
be installed at all nodes connected to the Ethernet, i.e. no
packet should enter the LAN bypassing the Smoothing
module. So to implement this Ethernet was simulated. The
Traffic Smoothing module along with the Neural Network
was coupled with this simulation. The Simulation follows
an event driven schedule. Two types of event can occur in
this simulation. First is an NIC attempting to send a packet
when the Ethernet is laying idle, note in this case more than
one such events can occur at the same time resulting in
collision. The other type of event is related to Traffic
Smoother in particular the Adaptive and the Neural Net
smoother. These events are periodic and activate the
corresponding algorithm. Occurrence of every event causes
the global time to progress.
The Real Time Traffic is assumed to be periodic, with a
fixed relative deadline. The Non Real Time Traffic is
generated randomly. Each station on the Ethernet has a
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Max Period and all the Non Real Time packets are
generated after intervals chosen randomly between the (0,
Max Period). So Max Period fixes the Non Real Time
Traffic load.
The Neural Network module is invoked periodically and
at every invocation it gives the prediction for the Ethernet
idle fraction for the next period.
III. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
The Neural Network used with the Neural Smoothing
module in the experiment runs was trained online initially
during a single run. But in later test runs for obtaining
plots, the Neural Network used the same weights and the
online training was discontinued. The reason for
discontinuing the online training was the prohibitive
timings and load on the system, of the simulation and the
Feed forward back propagation algorithm of the training
module when run together. All the results presented here
are offline. Using online training will result in better results
as it gives better prediction compared to the offline case.
Another problem faced in our case which has a negative
impact on the prediction results is the presence of feedback
loop. Since the prediction from the Neural Network is used
for smoothing traffic at all nodes so an accurate prediction
results in a change in traffic pattern then expected. Take for
example a case when the Neural Network predicts that the
next Sample period will experience traffic congestion. This
makes the Smoothing Algorithm to reduce the Non Real
Fig. 5. Plot of the Throughput for the static, HIMD and Neural Traffic Smoother. Red plot is for Static Smoother, green is for
Adaptive Smoother and Blue is for Neural Network based Traffic Smoother.
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Time Traffic. So the actual traffic during the next sample
period is not congested, opposite to the prediction. Thus we
have a paradox that betters the prediction, further it is from
actual traffic. A solution to the above problem is to use a
Neural Network to predict the Non Real Time traffic
coming at the Traffic Smoother instead of predicting the
global traffic at the Ethernet. In this case the outcome of
prediction doesn’t affect its input set. However in this case
the Smoothing algorithm losses the vital Global Traffic
information. The presence of this feedback loop further
enforces the need for online training. Since there is no
direct way of verifying whether the prediction is accurate or
not, the only way is to look at the final plots of the
Throughput and the Deadline Miss ratio.
Fig. 5. shows the plot for the throughput. The plot was
obtained with 10 stations with varying degree of traffic
load. The X axis gives the maximum period between two
consecutive NRT packets for each station. So the traffic
load decreases with increasing period.
Fig. 6. gives the plot for the Real Time Packet Loss Ratio
obtained with the same configuration as the one in fig. 5.
The X axis again gives a decreasing traffic load for each
station.
The plot for the Deadline Miss Ratio shows a lot of
variance, this is because the simulations are not run long
enough. Since the traffic generation is random so the
Deadline miss ratio varies. However if the simulation is
allowed to run for long time the plot smoothens.
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Fig. 6. Plot of Real Time Packet Loss Ratio, with 10 stations always ready to send. The Red plot is for Static Smoother, Green
for Adaptive Smoother and Blue for Neural Net based Smoother.

Systems,'' in Proceedings of IEEE Real-Time Technology and

Applications Symposium, pp. 192-202, 1999.
I. CONCLUSION [2] Seok-Kyu Kweon, Kang G. Shin and Gary Workman, ``Achieving
The bottle neck in the design is the excessive Real-Time Communication over Ethernet with Adaptive Traffic
Smoothing,'' in Proc. IEEE Real-Time Technology and Applications
computational complexity of the Feed forward Back
Symposium, pp. 90-100, June 2000.
propagation algorithm used for Training the Neural [3] W. E. Leland and D. V. Wilson, ``High time-resolution measurement
network. The Traffic Smoother will not be of much use if and analysis of LAN traffic: Implications for LAN interconnection”
the online training module consumes most of the Processor Proc. IEEE INFOCOM '91, April 1991, pp. 1360-1366
resources. However since the Neural Network is used to
predict the Global traffic rather than local traffic so just one
Node in the Ethernet needs to do the online training.
Whenever the Network is Trained well enough the Node
can simply broadcast the network weights and the Traffic
Smoothing module at each node can update the weights.
Another solution is to distribute the Training load over
all nodes. In this case, if N is the number of nodes
connected to the Ethernet, then the Training set T is divided
into N sets, where the set 1 contains elements { T1, TN+1,
T2N+1,…} set 2 contains the elements { T2, TN+2,T2N+2,…}
and so on. Then the node i trains a Neural Network on the
Training set i. The Traffic Smoother at each node keeps N
sets of weights. For predicting the Traffic at the Kth
Sampling interval the Traffic Smoother uses the KmodN
weight set. The Training module at each node sends a
broadcast of the new weight set with its id at regular
intervals and each Traffic Smoother updates the
corresponding weight set. What we gain through this is the
reduction in size of the Training Set. Since the Time
complexity of the Back Propagation Algorithm is O (n)
where n is the size of the Training Set, we get a speedup
equal to N.

REFERENCES
[1] Seok-Kyu Kweon, Kang G. Shin and Qin Zheng, ``Statistical Real-
Time Communication over Ethernet for Manufacturing Automation