Service-Differentiation for Delay-Sensitive Applications: An Optimisation-Based Approach

This paper deals with the performance of delay-sensitive applications running over a network that offers multiple classes of service, where the adaption of application rates in response to network feedback is the primary mechanism available for controlling quality of service. We first evaluate the gain in utilisation allowed by the introduction of several classes of service. To this end we compare the pairs of achievable rates, or schedulable regions, for two types of applications with two distinct delay requirements that make use of a single resource, with either no differentiation, simple priority-based differentiation, or earliest-deadline-first (EDF) scheduling-based differentiation. The main observations are that the gain achieved by differentiation is essentially affected by traffic burstiness, and that the two differentiation schemes yield very similar performance. We then consider what feedback information should be sent to traffic sources from different classes,  casting the problem in the framework of optimisation-based congestion control. We establish a connection between the sample-path shadow price rationale for feedback synthesis and the rare perturbation analysis technique for gradient estimation in discrete event systems theory. Based on this connection, we propose several marking schemes, for simple priority-based differentiation  with a measure of cost based on loss or delay, and also for EDF-based differentiation with loss-based cost. The interaction of these marking algorithms with simple congestion control algorithms is studied via simulations.