Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Dynamic Threshold Calculation For Congestion Noti Cation in IEEE 802.1Qbb
A Dynamic Threshold Calculation For Congestion Noti Cation in IEEE 802.1Qbb
4, APRIL 2020
Abstract— Ethernet has been a backbone of data centers since that use User Datagram Protocol [2]. Hence, a hop to hop
inception of cloud computing. The reason is its simplicity, cost based congestion notification (CN) method is introduced in
effectiveness, wide existing base, and maturity. However, Ethernet IEEE 802.1Qbb to provide reliability to such applications
is unreliable when it comes to providing guaranteed transmission.
Consequently, IEEE 802.1Qbb standard has been introduced along with Priority-based Flow Control (PFC). This standard is
to provide reliability based on congestion notification (CN) not just responsible for reliability provision for real-time flows
mechanism of IEEE 802.3x. However, IEEE 802.1Qbb has some on a hop to hop basis, but it elevates reliability of infrastructure
issues and limitations, such as higher buffer space reservation, as well, thus purges the need for upper layer protocols. In IEEE
lack of support for heterogeneous switching devices, and low 802.1Qbb, layer-2 switches provide feedback regarding buffer
throughput and efficiency of the network. This letter proposes
a novel approach for modified CN mechanism that provides conditions to the uplink switches when the buffer occupancy
44 percent less space reservation for CN mechanism, support stretches to a certain threshold limit. However, this threshold
for heterogeneity, higher throughput, and efficiency. selection is based on worst-case delay scenarios that roots
Index Terms— Congestion notification, IEEE802.1Qbb, optimal to issues of higher buffer space reservation, limitation of
threshold selection, reliable layer-2 infrastructure. heterogeneity of switching devices, and less throughput and
efficiency due to increased pause instigation [2].
I. I NTRODUCTION This letter proposes a novel approach to dynamic threshold
Authorized licensed use limited to: Edith Cowan University. Downloaded on April 17,2020 at 11:47:56 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
KHURSHID et al.: DYNAMIC THRESHOLD CALCULATION FOR CN IN IEEE 802.1Qbb 745
Authorized licensed use limited to: Edith Cowan University. Downloaded on April 17,2020 at 11:47:56 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
746 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 24, NO. 4, APRIL 2020
III. P ROPOSED T ECHNIQUE Algorithm 1 Compute RTT of the Initial Frame Output: RTT
To calculate the actual DV in real-world scenario and 1: initialize: frame = 64 byte initial frame (min MTU);
employ heterogeneity, we utilize dynamic calculation of delay 2: initialize: time = current system time;
values in the boot up process of the network as spanning tree 3: initialize: t = 0;
algorithm. To calculate the actual delay value we must first 4: initialize: q = time required to inject 512 bits on link;
analyze each delay individually in (1). 5: send frame to upstream link;
The parameter 2(Fmax ) in (1) is the serialization delay of 6: while response frame not received do
the sender and the receiver. If the sender or receiver started 7: wait q (one quanta);
transmitting a full size frame, then the pause instigation has to 8: end while
wait for the serialization of the ongoing MTU that cannot be 9: t = current system time - time;
predicted at the network boot up. FP F C is the time required 10: RTT = t / q;
to create and serialize the pause frame by the receiver that 11: return RTT ;
also cannot be predicted at the network boot up. However,
2(P ropc ) is the delay of the cable to send the pause frame
and receive the acknowledgement frame that is calculated reservation, end-to-end delay, throughput, and buffer utiliza-
dynamically at network boot up. The parameters T Xdr and tion. The results are also compared with the previous standard
RXdr , and RXds , and T Xds , and HDs are computed at run that also employed the same technique using non-selective
time. The aforementioned delays are variable due to the length CN technique. The simulated environment consists of 10Gbps
and speed of the link, heterogeneity of network devices, and links and a primary link is created as a bottleneck to create
the switching fabrics of different devices making such delays the back-pressure in order to trigger the congestion notification
unavoidable and impervious to be fixed. Therefore, to calculate mechanism. The network was purposefully overwhelmed with
actual DV at network boot up, each switch creates and sends a traffic to depict the peak load scenario where this technique
pause frame to its upstream switch and waits for the response. comes into play in order to achieve lossless operation.
Then, all the delays can be calculated by round trip time (RTT) The proposed technique utilized 44 percent less buffer
of the frame. So the RTT will be: space in order to achieve lossless operation as compared to
the technique proposed in IEEE 802.1Qbb. On a single port
RT Tinitial f rame = 2(P ropc ) + T Xdr + RXdr our technique reserved 81KB for each CoS as compared to
+ RXds + T Xds + HDs . (5) IEEE82.1Qbb that reserves 144KB for each CoS. This sums up
to <4MB space reservation on a 48 port switch in comparison
Now the delay value can be calculated as: to IEEE 802.1Qbb that reserve approx. 7MB of buffer space as
DV = 2(Fmax ) + FP F C + RT Tinitial f rame . (6) shown in Fig. 2(a). The results for IEEE 802.3x are not shown
because it does not reserve buffer space as it stops traffic for
Moreover, we can calculate the DV as per IEEE 802.1Qbb all flows with a fixed buffer value that can be set as required.
maximum MTU and pause frame size as: Fig. 2(b) shows the end-to-end delay comparison of all three
techniques for 8 different CoS as IEEE 802.1Qbb supports
DV = 2(16160) + (672) + (RT Tinitial f rame × 512). (7) up to only 8 different CoS. It can be seen that proposed
Maximum frame size in IEEE 802.1Qbb is 2000 octets + technique has less end-to-end delay as compared to other.
preamble (16160 bits). PFC frame is 64 octets + preamble Moreover, end-to-end delay for CoS 4 and above is much more
(672 bits), and 512 bits per quanta value for the RTT frame [3]. in proposed technique and IEEE 802.1Qbb because these flows
In (7), RT Tinitialf rame is a variable that depends on the are low priority flows. In order to compensate the high priority
interface delays of the switching devices, length of the wire, flows, the low priority flows suffer and result in higher end-
and bandwidth of the network. The dynamic RT Tinitialf rame to-end delay. IEEE 802.3x does not support multiple flows;
calculation lift the restriction of same technology employed by therefore, all the flows have uniform end-to-end delay for all
both the switches as each switch can contribute its own delay flows including high priority flows. This results in 33 percent
values when the initial frame is processed in real-time. The higher delays as compared to proposed technique and IEEE
DV is the total number of bits required in the buffer before 802.1Qbb.
initiating a pause frame. Therefore, the threshold for pause Fig. 2(c) shows the average throughput of the bottleneck
instigation should be calculated as given in (8). link. The proposed technique and IEEE 802.1Qbb both out-
performed IEEE 802.3x because IEEE 802.3x stops all the
T hreshold = Buf f erSpace(P erLinkInterf ace) − DV. (8) flows at the same time and when the flows are reinitiated,
it encounters delay that results in low utilization of the link
Pseudocode for calculating RT Tinitialf rame on each port
during delay. The proposed technique achieved 1 percent
of the switch is expressed in Algorithm 1.
higher throughput because it reserves less buffer space as
compared to IEEE 802.1Qbb resulting in more space available
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS at the receiver to accommodate more data instead of initiating
In this section, performance of the proposed technique the pause thus results in better throughput.
is analyzed. For simulation environment, NS2 was used to The results in Fig. 2(d) show that the proposed technique
investigate the effects of proposed technique on buffer space utilizes the buffer much efficiently than the others. This is
Authorized licensed use limited to: Edith Cowan University. Downloaded on April 17,2020 at 11:47:56 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
KHURSHID et al.: DYNAMIC THRESHOLD CALCULATION FOR CN IN IEEE 802.1Qbb 747
due to the fact that proposed technique does not reserve extra R EFERENCES
space for implementation of pause operation. Here, extra space [1] Priority-Based Flow Control, IEEE Standard 802.1Qbb, 2011.
refers to the space reserved by IEEE 802.1Qbb on the basis Accessed: May 12, 2019. [Online]. Available: http://www.ieee802.org/1/
of worst-case delays while the proposed technique reserve pages/802.1bb.html
[2] W. Khurshid, M. L. M. Kiah, I. A. Khan, R. Salleh, A. T. Chronopoulos,
space based on actual delay thus the difference between space and S. A. Madani, “Comparative study of congestion notification tech-
reserved by IEEE 802.1Qbb and the proposed technique is niques for hop-by-hop-based flow control in data centre Ethernet,” IET
referred as extra space. The proposed technique and 802.1Qbb Netw., vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 248–257, Jul. 2018.
[3] IEEE Draft Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks—
make use of buffer more proficiently than IEEE 802.3x Virtual Bridged Local Area Networks—Amendment: Priority-Based
because buffer space is divided into eight queues for each flow. Flow Control, Standard IEEE P802.1Qbb/D2.3, (DRAFT Amendment
Consequently, when the PFC mechanism is triggered, only to IEEE Std 802.1Q -2005), Sep. 2010, pp. 1–40. [Online]. Available:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5570062
relevant data is paused, meanwhile the other flows transmit
[4] T. Issariyakul and E. Hossain, “Introduction to network simulator 2
normally. (NS2),” in Introduction to Network Simulator NS2. Boston, MA, USA:
Springer, 2012, pp. 21–40.
[5] IEEE Standards for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks: Sup-
V. C ONCLUSION plements to Carrier Sense Multiple Access With Collision Detec-
tion (CSMA/CD) Access Method and Physical Layer Specifications—
In this study, we proposed a novel technique to dynam- Specification for 802.3 Full Duplex Operation and Physical Layer
ically calculate the threshold for congestion notification for Specification for 100 Mb/s Operation on Two Pairs of Category 3
IEEE 802.1Qbb standard. Current implementation of IEEE Or Better Balanced Twisted Pair Cable (100BASE-T2), IEEE Standard
802.3-1997, 1997, pp. 1–324.
802.1Qbb employ the congestion notification mechanism
[6] IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks–Media
based on worst case delays. To resolve the issue, an algorithm Access Control (MAC) Bridges and Virtual Bridged Local Area
is devised to calculate the threshold dynamically in order to Networks–Amendment 17: Priority-based Flow Control, IEEE Stan-
avoid the worst-case based delay threshold. Also, the proposed dard 802.1Qbb-2011 (Amendment to IEEE Standard 802.1Q-2011
as Amended by IEEE Standard 802.1Qbe-2011 and IEEE Standard
scheme was implemented by extensive simulations and was 802.1Qbc-2011, 2011, pp. 1–40.
evaluated for its performance. [7] N. Aslam, K. Xia, A. Ali, and S. Ullah, “Adaptive TCP-ICCW conges-
tion control mechanism for QoS in renewable wireless sensor networks,”
IEEE Sensors Lett., vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 1–4, Dec. 2017.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT [8] IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks—Virtual
Bridged Local Area Networks Amendment 13: Congestion Notification,
The authors would like to thank Dr. C. Desanti for his con- IEEE Standard 802.1Qau-2010 (Amendment to IEEE Standard 802.1Q-
tribution towards better understanding of the IEEE802.1Qbb. 2005), 2010, pp. 1–135.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Edith Cowan University. Downloaded on April 17,2020 at 11:47:56 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.