Biao Chen

Guaranteeing synchronous message deadlines with the timed token medium access control protocol

We study the problem of guaranteeing synchronous message deadlines in token ring networks where the timed token medium access control protocol is employed. Synchronous bandwidth, defined as the maximum time for which a node can transmit its synchronous messages every time it receives the token, is a key parameter in the control of synchronous message transmission. To ensure the transmission of synchronous messages before their deadlines, synchronous capacities must be properly allocated to individual nodes. We address the issue of appropriate allocation of the synchronous capacities. Several synchronous bandwidth allocation schemes are analyzed in terms of their ability to satisfy deadline constraints of synchronous messages. We show that an inappropriate allocation of the synchronous capacities could cause message deadlines to be missed, even if the synchronous traffic is extremely low. We propose a scheme, called the normalized proportional allocation scheme, which can guarantee the synchronous message deadlines for synchronous traffic of up to 33% of available utilization. >

Optimal synchronous capacity allocation for hard real-time communications with the timed token protocol

The authors study the problem of transmitting synchronous messages before their deadlines in communication networks where the timed token medium access control protocol is employed. Synchronous capacity, defined as the maximum time for which a node can transmit its synchronous message every time it receives the token, is a key parameter in the control of synchronous message transmission. To ensure the transmission of synchronous messages before their deadlines, synchronous capacities must be property allocated to individual nodes. The authors develop and analyze an optimal synchronous capacity allocation scheme. An optimal scheme can allocate the synchronous capacities in such a way that the synchronous message deadlines are guaranteed if there exists any allocation scheme that can do so. The optimality of the allocation scheme proposed here is formally proved, and the bounds for its worst case achievable utilization are derived.<<ETX>>

Guaranteeing synchronous message deadlines with the timed token protocol

The problem of guaranteeing synchronous message deadlines in token ring networks in which the timed token medium access control protocol is used is discussed. Synchronous capacity, defined as the maximum time for which a node can transmit its synchronous messages every time it receives the token, is a key parameter in the control of synchronous message transmission. To ensure the transmission of synchronous messages before their deadlines, synchronous capacities must be properly allocated to individual nodes. Several synchronous capacity allocation schemes are analyzed in terms of their ability to satisfy deadline constraints of synchronous messages. It is shown that an inappropriate allocation of the synchronous capacities could cause message deadlines to be missed, even if the synchronous traffic is extremely low. The normalized proportional allocation scheme, which can guarantee the synchronous message deadlines for synchronous traffic of up to 33% of available utilization is proposed.<<ETX>>

Local synchronous capacity allocation schemes for guaranteeing message deadlines with the timed token protocol

The problem of guaranteeing synchronous message deadlines in communication networks using the timed token medium access control protocol is studied. To ensure the transmission of synchronous messages before their deadlines, synchronous capacities must be properly allocated to individual nodes. A class of local synchronous capacity allocation schemes, which allocate the synchronous capacity to a node without using information about messages on the other nodes, is developed, analyzed, and evaluated in terms of the ability of the schemes to guarantee message deadlines. It is shown that one of the local allocation schemes proposed can achieve the same performance as that of the best global allocation scheme known to date.<<ETX>>

Fault-tolerant, real-time communication in FDDI-based networks

The first high-speed network to meet the Safenet standards bandwidth requirements, the Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) needs help to meet Safenets fault tolerance requirement. Researchers have proposed a number of FDDI-based network architecture designs for improving fault tolerance. An architecture called FBRN (FDDI-Based Reconfigurable Network) provides enhanced fault tolerance by using (a) multiple FDDI networks to connect hosts, and (b) efficient fault detection and network configuration algorithms. To provide fault-tolerant real-time communication with the FBRN architecture, users must manage network resources properly. We sought to accomplish this by using a fault-tolerant, real-time management mechanism with online and offline components. We focused on achieving high performance by designing efficient and effective online and offline management algorithms to work around multiple faults.

Meeting delay requirements in computer networks with wormhole routing

We study high performance networks with wormhole routing and investigate their performance in terms of meeting message delay constraints. Traditional system uses unregulated greedy transmission control. This may result in unfairness of network access and unbounded packet blocking time, making it very difficult to efficiently support real-time applications. To overcome this problem, we propose a regulated transmission control method in which packet transmission at the source is regulated and hence unnecessary network contention is eliminated The regulated method is a generalization of the unregulated method and can be easily implemented in most of the commercially available networks.

Real-time communication in FDDI-based reconfigurable networks

We report our ongoing research in real-time communication with FDDI-based reconfigurable networks. The original FDDI architecture was enhanced in order to improve its fault-tolerance capability while a scheduling methodology, including message assignment, bandwidth allocation, and bandwidth management is developed to support real-time communication. As a result, message deadlines are guaranteed even in the event of network faults.<<ETX>>