Document Type

Technical Report

Publication Date

1986-06-01

Filename

WUCS-86-10.pdf

Technical Report Number

WUCS-86-10

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a simulation study undertaken to evaluate a high performance packet switching fabric supporting point-to-point and multipoint communications. This switching fabric contains several components each based on conventional binary routing networks. The most novel element is the Copy Network which performs the packet replication needed for multipoint connections. We present results characterizing the performance of the Copy Network, in particular quantifying its dependence on fanout and the location of active sources. We also evaluate several architectural alternatives for conventional binary routing networks. For example, we quantify the performance gains obtainable by using cut-through switching in the context of binary routing networks with small buffers. One surprising result is that networks constructed for nodes with more than two input and output ports can perform less well than those constructed form binary nodes. We quantify and explain this result, showing that it is a consequences of a subtle effect of the FIFO queueing discipline used in the nodes. We also show that substantially better performance can be obtained by relaxing the strict FIFo discipline.

Comments

Permanent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7936/K7SB442W

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