Modeling and performance analysis for multimedia data flows scheduling in software defined networks

Supporting diverse Quality of Service (QoS) performance for data flows generated by multimedia applications has been a challenging issue in Software Defined Network (SDN). However, the current available QoS provision mechanisms proposed for SDN have not fully considered the heterogeneity and performance diversity for multimedia data flows. To this end, this work presents a hybrid scheduling model by combining priority queueing with a packet general-processor sharing to provide diverse QoS guarantees for multimedia applications in SDN. Network Calculus is applied to develop modeling and analysis techniques to evaluate the QoS performance of the proposed scheme. Performance bounds guaranteed by the proposed scheme for heterogeneous data flows, including their worst-case end-to-end delay and queueing backlog, are thus determined. Both analytical and simulation results show that the modeling and analysis techniques are general and flexible thus are fully capable of modeling QoS for diverse requirements of multimedia applications in SDN.