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On applying stochastic network calculus

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Abstract

Performance evaluation plays a crucial role in the design of network systems. Many theoretical tools, including queueing theory, effective bandwidth and network calculus, have been proposed to providemodeling mechanisms and results. While these theories have been widely adopted for performance evaluation, each has its own limitation. With that network systems have become more complex and harder to describe, where a lot of uncertainty and randomness exists, to make performance evaluation of such systems tractable, some compromise is often necessary and helpful. Stochastic network calculus (SNC) is such a theoretical tool. While SNC is a relatively new theory, it is gaining increasing interest and popularity. In the current SNC literature, much attention has been paid on the development of the theory itself. In addition, researchers have also started applying SNC to performance analysis of various types of systems in recent years. The aim of this paper is to provide a tutorial on the new theoretical tool. Specifically, various SNC traffic models and SNC server models are reviewed. The focus is on how to apply SNC, for which, four critical steps are formalized and discussed. In addition, a list of SNC application topics/areas, where there may exist huge research potential, is presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Chuang Lin

  2. China Electric Equipment and Systems Engineering Ltd., Beijing, 100084, China

    Yiping Deng

  3. Department of Telematics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim NO-7491, Norway

    Yuming Jiang

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  1. Chuang Lin
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  2. Yiping Deng
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  3. Yuming Jiang
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Correspondence to Yiping Deng.

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Chuang Lin received the PhD in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, China, in 1994. He is a professor of the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His current research interests include computer networks, performance evaluation, network security analysis, and Petri net theory and its applications. He has published more than 300 papers in research journals and IEEE conference proceedings in these areas and has published four books.

Yiping Deng received BE in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University in 2003. He finished his PhD degree at the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University, China. He is now working in China electric equipment and systems engineering Ltd. His research interests include stochastic network calculus, wireless communication, and wireless sensor networks.

Yuming Jiang received his BS in Electronic Engineering from Peking University in 1988, ME in Computer Science and Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology in 1991, and PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2001. Since December 2005, he has been with the Department of Telematics, NTNU, where he is a professor, and since 2008, he has been co-appointed at Q2S, NTNU. His research interests include the provision of quality of service guarantees in communication networks, performance evaluation of communication networks and network calculus, multimedia delivery over communication networks, and network measurement.

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Lin, C., Deng, Y. & Jiang, Y. On applying stochastic network calculus. Front. Comput. Sci. 7, 924–942 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-013-3095-1

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