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rfc:rfc2682

Network Working Group I. Widjaja Request For Comments: 2682 Fujitsu Network Communications Category: Informational A. Elwalid

                                        Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies
                                                        September 1999
          Performance Issues in VC-Merge Capable ATM LSRs

Status of this Memo

 This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
 not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
 memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

 VC merging allows many routes to be mapped to the same VC label,
 thereby providing a scalable mapping method that can support
 thousands of edge routers. VC merging requires reassembly buffers so
 that cells belonging to different packets intended for the same
 destination do not interleave with each other.  This document
 investigates the impact of VC merging on the additional buffer
 required for the reassembly buffers and other buffers.  The main
 result indicates that VC merging incurs a minimal overhead compared
 to non-VC merging in terms of additional buffering. Moreover, the
 overhead decreases as utilization increases, or as the traffic
 becomes more bursty.

1.0 Introduction

 Recently some radical proposals to overhaul the legacy router
 architectures have been presented by several organizations, notably
 the Ipsilon's IP switching [1], Cisco's Tag switching [2], Toshiba's
 CSR [3], IBM's ARIS [4], and IETF's MPLS [5].  Although the details
 of their implementations vary, there is one fundamental concept that
 is shared by all these proposals: map the route information to short
 fixed-length labels so that next-hop routers can be determined by
 direct indexing.
 Although any layer 2 switching mechanism can in principle be applied,
 the use of ATM switches in the backbone network is believed to be a
 very attractive solution since ATM hardware switches have been
 extensively studied and are widely available in many different

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 1] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

 architectures.  In this document, we will assume that layer 2
 switching uses ATM technology. In this case, each IP packet may be
 segmented to multiple 53-byte cells before being switched.
 Traditionally, AAL 5 has been used as the encapsulation method in
 data communications since it is simple, efficient, and has a powerful
 error detection mechanism.  For the ATM switch to forward incoming
 cells to the correct outputs, the IP route information needs to be
 mapped to ATM labels which are kept in the VPI or/and VCI fields.
 The relevant route information that is stored semi-permanently in the
 IP routing table contains the tuple (destination, next-hop router).
 The route information changes when the network state changes and this
 typically occurs slowly, except during transient cases.  The word
 "destination" typically refers to the destination network (or CIDR
 prefix), but can be readily generalized to (destination network,
 QoS), (destination host, QoS), or many other granularities. In this
 document, the destination can mean any of the above or other possible
 granularities.
 Several methods of mapping the route information to ATM labels exist.
 In the simplest form, each source-destination pair is mapped to a
 unique VC value at a switch. This method, called the non-VC merging
 case, allows the receiver to easily reassemble cells into respective
 packets since the VC values can be used to distinguish the senders.
 However, if there are n sources and destinations, each switch is
 potentially required to manage O(n^2) VC labels for full-meshed
 connectivity.  For example, if there are 1,000 sources/destinations,
 then the size of the VC routing table is on the order of 1,000,000
 entries.  Clearly, this method is not scalable to large networks.  In
 the second method called  VP merging, the VP labels of cells that are
 intended for the same destination would be translated to the same
 outgoing VP value, thereby reducing VP consumption downstream.  For
 each VP, the VC value is used to identify the sender so that the
 receiver can reconstruct packets even though cells from different
 packets are allowed to interleave.  Each switch is now required to
 manage O(n) VP labels - a considerable saving from O(n^2).  Although
 the number of label entries is considerably reduced, VP merging  is
 limited to only 4,096 entries at the network-to-network interface.
 Moreover, VP merging requires coordination of the VC values for a
 given VP, which introduces more complexity.  A third method, called
 VC merging, maps incoming VC labels for the same destination to the
 same outgoing VC label. This method is scalable and does not have the
 space constraint problem as in VP merging. With VC merging, cells for
 the same destination is indistinguishable at the output of a switch.
 Therefore, cells belonging to different packets for the same
 destination cannot interleave with each other, or else the receiver
 will not be able to reassemble the packets.  With VC merging, the
 boundary between two adjacent packets are identified by the "End-of-
 Packet" (EOP) marker used by AAL 5.

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 2] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

 It is worthy to mention that cell interleaving may be allowed if we
 use the AAL 3/4 Message Identifier (MID) field to identify the sender
 uniquely. However, this method has some serious drawbacks as:  1) the
 MID size may not be sufficient to identify all senders, 2) the
 encapsulation method is not efficient, 3) the CRC capability is not
 as powerful as in AAL 5, and 4) AAL 3/4 is not as widely supported as
 AAL 5 in data communications.
 Before VC merging with no cell interleaving can be qualified as the
 most promising approach, two main issues need to be addressed.
 First, the feasibility of an ATM switch that is capable of merging
 VCs needs to be investigated. Second, there is widespread concern
 that the additional amount of buffering required to implement VC
 merging is excessive and thus making the VC-merging method
 impractical.  Through analysis and simulation, we will dispel these
 concerns in this document by showing that the additional buffer
 requirement for VC merging is minimal for most practical purposes.
 Other performance related issues such as additional delay due to VC
 merging will also be discussed.

2.0 A VC-Merge Capable MPLS Switch Architecture

 In principle, the reassembly buffers can be placed at the input or
 output side of a switch. If they are located at the input, then the
 switch fabric has to transfer all cells belonging to a given packet
 in an atomic manner since cells are not allowed to interleave.  This
 requires the fabric to perform frame switching which is not flexible
 nor desirable when multiple QoSs need to be supported.  On the other
 hand, if the reassembly buffers are located at the output, the switch
 fabric can forward each cell independently as in normal ATM
 switching.  Placing the reassembly buffers at the output makes an
 output-buffered ATM switch a natural choice.
 We consider a generic output-buffered VC-merge capable MPLS switch
 with VCI translation performed at the output. Other possible
 architectures may also be adopted.  The switch consists of a non-
 blocking cell switch fabric and multiple output modules (OMs), each
 is associated with an output port.  Each arriving ATM cell is
 appended with two fields containing an output port number and an
 input port number.  Based on the output port number, the switch
 fabric forwards each cell to the correct output port, just as in
 normal ATM switches.  If VC merging is not implemented, then the OM
 consists of an output buffer.  If VC merging is implemented, the OM
 contains a number of reassembly buffers (RBs), followed by a merging
 unit, and an output buffer. Each RB typically corresponds to an
 incoming VC value. It is important to note that each buffer is a
 logical buffer, and it is envisioned that there is a common pool of
 memory for the reassembly buffers and the output buffer.

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 3] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

 The purpose of the RB is to ensure that cells for a given packet do
 not interleave with other cells that are merged to the same VC.  This
 mechanism (called store-and-forward at the packet level) can be
 accomplished by storing each incoming cell for a given packet at the
 RB until the last cell of the packet arrives.  When the last cell
 arrives, all cells in the packet are transferred in an atomic manner
 to the output buffer for transmission to the next hop. It is worth
 pointing out that performing a cut-through mode at the RB is not
 recommended since it would result in wastage of bandwidth if the
 subsequent cells are delayed.  During the transfer of a packet to the
 output buffer, the incoming VCI is translated to the outgoing VCI by
 the merging unit.  To save VC translation table space, different
 incoming VCIs are merged to the same outgoing VCI during the
 translation process if the cells are intended for the same
 destination.  If all traffic is best-effort, full-merging where all
 incoming VCs destined for the same destination network are mapped to
 the same outgoing VC, can be implemented.  However, if the traffic is
 composed of multiple classes, it is desirable to implement partial
 merging, where incoming VCs destined for the same (destination
 network, QoS) are mapped to the same outgoing VC.
 Regardless of whether full merging or partial merging is implemented,
 the output buffer may consist of a single FIFO buffer or multiple
 buffers each corresponding to a destination network or (destination
 network, QoS).  If a single output buffer is used, then the switch
 essentially tries to emulate frame switching.  If multiple output
 buffers are used, VC merging is different from frame switching since
 cells of a given packet are not bound to be transmitted back-to-back.
 In fact, fair queueing can be implemented so that cells from their
 respective output buffers are served according to some QoS
 requirements. Note that cell-by-cell scheduling can be implemented
 with VC merging, whereas only packet-by-packet scheduling can be
 implemented with frame switching.  In summary, VC merging is more
 flexible than frame switching and supports better QoS control.

3.0 Performance Investigation of VC Merging

 This section compares the VC-merging switch and the non-VC merging
 switch. The non-VC merging switch is analogous to the traditional
 output-buffered ATM switch, whereby cells of any packets are allowed
 to interleave.  Since each cell is a distinct unit of information,
 the non-VC merging switch is a work-conserving system at the cell
 level.  On the other hand, the VC-merging switch is non-work
 conserving so its performance is always lower than that of the non-VC
 merging switch.  The main objective here is to study the effect of VC
 merging on performance implications of MPLS switches such as
 additional delay, additional buffer, etc., subject to different
 traffic conditions.

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 4] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

 In the simulation, the arrival process to each reassembly buffer is
 an independent ON-OFF process. Cells within an ON period form a
 single packet. During an OFF periof, the slots are idle.  Note that
 the ON-OFF process is a general process that can model any traffic
 process.

3.1 Effect of Utilization on Additional Buffer Requirement

 We first investigate the effect of switch utilization on the
 additional buffer requirement for a given overflow probability.  To
 carry the comparison, we analyze the VC-merging and non-VC merging
 case when the average packet size is equal to 10 cells, using
 geometrically distributed packet sizes and packet interarrival times,
 with cells of a packet arriving contiguously (later, we consider
 other distributions).  The results show, as expected, the VC-merging
 switch requires more buffers than the non-VC merging switch. When the
 utilization is low, there may be relatively many incomplete packets
 in the reassembly buffers at any given time, thus wasting storage
 resource.  For example, when the utilization is 0.3, VC merging
 requires an additional storage of about 45 cells to achieve the same
 overflow probability.  However, as the utilization increases to 0.9,
 the additional storage to achieve the same overflow probability drops
 to about 30 cells.  The reason is that when traffic intensity
 increases, the VC-merging system becomes more work-conserving.
 It is important to note that ATM switches must be dimensioned at high
 utilization value (in the range of 0.8-0.9) to withstand harsh
 traffic conditions.  At the utilization of 0.9, a VC-merge ATM switch
 requires a buffer of size 976 cells to provide an overflow
 probability of 10^{-5}, whereas an non-VC merge ATM switch requires a
 buffer of size 946.  These numbers translate the additional buffer
 requirement for VC merging to about 3% - hardly an additional
 buffering cost.

3.2 Effect of Packet Size on Additional Buffer Requirement

 We now vary the average packet size to see the impact on the buffer
 requirement.  We fix the utilization to 0.5 and use two different
 average packet sizes; that is, B=10 and B=30. To achieve the same
 overflow probability, VC merging requires an additional buffer of
 about 40 cells (or 4 packets) compared to non-VC merging when B=10.
 When B=30, the additional buffer requirement is about 90 cells (or 3
 packets).  As expected, the additional buffer requirement in terms of
 cells increases as the packet size increases. However, the additional
 buffer requirement is roughly constant in terms of packets.

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 5] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

3.3 Additional Buffer Overhead Due to Packet Reassembly

 There may be some concern that VC merging may require too much
 buffering when the number of reassembly buffers increases, which
 would happen if the switch size is increased or if cells for packets
 going to different destinations are allowed to interleave.  We will
 show that the concern is unfounded since buffer sharing becomes more
 efficient as the number of reassembly buffers increases.
 To demonstrate our argument, we consider the overflow probability for
 VC merging for several values of reassembly buffers (N); i.e., N=4,
 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128.  The utilization is fixed to 0.8 for each
 case, and the average packet size is chosen to be 10.  For a given
 overflow probability, the increase in buffer requirement becomes less
 pronounced as N increases.  Beyond a certain value (N=32), the
 increase in buffer requirement becomes insignificant.  The reason is
 that as N increases, the traffic gets thinned and eventually
 approaches a limiting process.

3.4 Effect of Interarrival time Distribution on Additional Buffer

 We now turn our attention to different traffic processes.  First, we
 use the same ON period distribution and change the OFF period
 distribution from geometric to hypergeometric which has a larger
 Square Coefficient of Variation (SCV), defined to be the ratio of the
 variance to the square of the mean.  Here we fix the utilization at
 0.5.  As expected, the switch performance degrades as the SCV
 increases in both the VC-merging and non-VC merging cases.  To
 achieve a buffer overflow probability of 10^{-4}, the additional
 buffer required is about 40 cells when SCV=1, 26 cells when SCV=1.5,
 and 24 cells when SCV=2.6.  The result shows that VC merging becomes
 more work-conserving as SCV increases.  In summary, as the
 interarrival time between packets becomes more bursty, the additional
 buffer requirement for VC merging diminishes.

3.5 Effect of Internet Packets on Additional Buffer Requirement

 Up to now, the packet size has been modeled as a geometric
 distribution with a certain parameter.  We modify the packet size
 distribution to a more realistic one for the rest of this document.
 Since the initial deployment of VC-merge capable ATM switches is
 likely to be in the core network, it is more realistic to consider
 the packet size distribution in the Wide Area Network.  To this end,
 we refer to the data given in [6].  The data collected on Feb 10,
 1996, in FIX-West network, is in the form of probability mass
 function versus packet size in bytes.  Data collected at other dates
 closely resemble this one.

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 6] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

 The distribution appears bi-modal with two big masses at 40 bytes
 (about a third) due to TCP acknowledgment packets, and 552 bytes
 (about 22 percent) due to Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) limitations
 in many routers. Other prominent packet sizes include 72 bytes (about
 4.1 percent), 576 bytes (about 3.6 percent), 44 bytes (about 3
 percent), 185 bytes (about 2.7 percent), and 1500 bytes (about 1.5
 percent) due to Ethernet MTU. The mean packet size is  257 bytes, and
 the variance is 84,287 bytes^2. Thus, the SCV for the Internet packet
 size is about 1.1.
 To convert the IP packet size in bytes to ATM cells, we assume AAL 5
 using null encapsulation where the additional overhead in AAL 5 is 8
 bytes long [7].  Using the null encapsulation technique, the average
 packet size is about 6.2 ATM cells.
 We examine the buffer overflow probability against the buffer size
 using the Internet packet size distribution. The OFF period is
 assumed to have a geometric distribution.  Again, we find that the
 same behavior as before, except that the buffer requirement drops
 with Internet packets due to smaller average packet size.

3.6 Effect of Correlated Interarrival Times on Additional Buffer

  Requirement
 To model correlated interarrival times, we use the DAR(p) process
 (discrete autoregressive process of order p) [8], which has been used
 to accurately model video traffic (Star Wars movie) in [9].  The
 DAR(p) process is a p-th order (lag-p) discrete-time Markov chain.
 The state of the process at time n depends explicitly on the states
 at times (n-1), ...,  (n-p).
 We examine the overflow probability for the case where the
 interarrival time between packets is geometric and independent, and
 the case where the interarrival time is geometric and correlated to
 the previous one with coefficient of correlation equal to 0.9. The
 empirical distribution of the Internet packet size from the last
 section is used. The utilization is fixed to 0.5 in each case.
 Although, the overflow probability increases as p increases, the
 additional amount of buffering actually decreases for VC merging as
 p, or equivalently the correlation, increases.  One can easily
 conclude that higher-order correlation or long-range dependence,
 which occurs in self-similar traffic, will result in similar
 qualitative performance.

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 7] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

3.7 Slow Sources

 The discussions up to now have assumed that cells within a packet
 arrive back-to-back. When traffic shaping is implemented, adjacent
 cells within the same packet would typically be spaced by idle slots.
 We call such sources as "slow sources".  Adjacent cells within the
 same packet may also be perturbed and spaced as these cells travel
 downstream due to the merging and splitting of cells at preceding
 nodes.
 Here, we assume that each source transmits at the rate of r_s (0 <
 r_s < 1), in units of link speed, to the ATM switch.  To capture the
 merging and splitting of cells as they travel in the network, we will
 also assume that the cell interarrival time within a packet is ran-
 domly perturbed.  To model this perturbation, we stretch the original
 ON period by 1/r_s, and  flip a Bernoulli coin with parameter r_s
 during the stretched ON period. In other words, a slot would contain
 a cell with probability r_s, and would be idle with probability 1-r_s
 during the ON period. By doing so, the average packet size remains
 the same as r_s is varied.  We simulated slow sources on the VC-merge
 ATM switch using the Internet packet size distribution with r_s=1 and
 r_s=0.2.  The packet interarrival time is assumed to be geometrically
 distributed.  Reducing the source rate in general reduces the
 stresses on the ATM switches since the traffic becomes smoother.
 With VC merging, slow sources also have the effect of increasing the
 reassembly time. At utilization of 0.5, the reassembly time is more
 dominant and causes the slow source (with r_s=0.2) to require more
 buffering than the fast source (with r_s=1).  At utilization of 0.8,
 the smoother traffic is more dominant and causes the slow source
 (with r_s=0.2) to require less buffering than the fast source (with
 r_s=1).  This result again has practical consequences in ATM switch
 design where buffer dimensioning is performed at reasonably high
 utilization. In this situation, slow sources only help.

3.8 Packet Delay

 It is of interest to see the impact of cell reassembly on packet
 delay. Here we consider the delay at one node only; end-to-end delays
 are subject of ongoing work.  We define the delay of a packet as the
 time between the arrival of the first cell of a packet at the switch
 and the departure of the last cell of the same packet.  We study the
 average packet delay as a function of utilization for both VC-merging
 and non-VC merging switches for the case r_s=1 (back-to-back cells in
 a packet).  Again, the Internet packet size distribution is used to
 adopt the more realistic scenario. The interarrival time of packets
 is geometrically distributed.  Although the difference in the worst-
 case delay between VC-merging and non-VC merging can be theoretically
 very large, we consistently observe that the difference in average

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 8] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

 delays of the two systems to be consistently about one average packet
 time for a wide range of utilization. The difference is due to the
 average time needed to reassemble a packet.
 To see the effect of cell spacing in a packet, we again simulate the
 average packet delay for r_s=0.2. We observe that the difference in
 average delays of VC merging and non-VC merging increases to a few
 packet times (approximately 20 cells at high utilization).  It should
 be noted that when a VC-merge capable ATM switch reassembles packets,
 in effect it performs the task that the receiver has to do otherwise.
 From practical point-of-view, an increase in 20 cells translates to
 about 60 micro seconds at OC-3 link speed.  This additional delay
 should be insignificant for most applications.

4.0 Security Considerations

 There are no security considerations directly related to this
 document since the document is concerned with the performance
 implications of VC merging. There are also no known security
 considerations as a result of the proposed modification of a legacy
 ATM LSR to incorporate VC merging.

5.0 Discussion

 This document has investigated the impacts of VC merging on the
 performance of an ATM LSR.  We experimented with various traffic
 processes to understand the detailed behavior of VC-merge capable ATM
 LSRs.  Our main finding indicates that VC merging incurs a minimal
 overhead compared to non-VC merging in terms of additional buffering.
 Moreover, the overhead decreases as utilization increases, or as the
 traffic becomes more bursty.  This fact has important practical
 consequences since switches are dimensioned for high utilization and
 stressful traffic conditions.  We have considered the case where the
 output buffer uses a FIFO scheduling. However, based on our
 investigation on slow sources, we believe that fair queueing will not
 introduce a significant impact on the additional amount of buffering.
 Others may wish to investigate this further.

6.0 Acknowledgement

 The authors thank Debasis Mitra for his penetrating questions during
 the internal talks and discussions.

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 9] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

7.0 References

 [1] P. Newman, Tom Lyon and G. Minshall, "Flow Labelled IP:
     Connectionless ATM Under IP", in Proceedings of INFOCOM'96, San-
     Francisco, April 1996.
 [2] Rekhter,Y., Davie, B., Katz, D., Rosen, E. and G. Swallow, "Cisco
     Systems' Tag Switching Architecture Overview", RFC 2105, February
     1997.
 [3] Katsube, Y., Nagami, K. and H. Esaki, "Toshiba's Router
     Architecture Extensions for ATM: Overview", RFC 2098, February
     1997.
 [4] A. Viswanathan, N. Feldman, R. Boivie and R. Woundy, "ARIS:
     Aggregate Route-Based IP Switching", Work in Progress.
 [5] R. Callon, P. Doolan, N. Feldman, A. Fredette, G. Swallow and A.
     Viswanathan, "A Framework for Multiprotocol Label Switching",
     Work in Progress.
 [6] WAN Packet Size Distribution,
     http://www.nlanr.net/NA/Learn/packetsizes.html.
 [7] Heinanen, J., "Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM Adaptation
     Layer 5", RFC 1483, July 1993.
 [8] P. Jacobs and P. Lewis, "Discrete Time Series Generated by
     Mixtures III:  Autoregressive Processes (DAR(p))", Technical
     Report NPS55-78-022, Naval Postgraduate School, 1978.
 [9] B.K. Ryu and A. Elwalid, "The Importance of Long-Range Dependence
     of VBR Video Traffic in ATM Traffic Engineering", ACM SigComm'96,
     Stanford, CA, pp. 3-14, August 1996.

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 10] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

Authors' Addresses

 Indra Widjaja
 Fujitsu Network Communications
 Two Blue Hill Plaza
 Pearl River, NY 10965, USA
 Phone: 914 731-2244
 EMail: indra.widjaja@fnc.fujitsu.com
 Anwar Elwalid
 Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies
 600 Mountain Ave, Rm 2C-324
 Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA
 Phone: 908 582-7589
 EMail: anwar@lucent.com

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 11] RFC 2682 Issues in VC Merge Capable ATM LSRs September 1999

9. Full Copyright Statement

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999).  All Rights Reserved.
 This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
 and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
 kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
 developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
 copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
 followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
 English.
 The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
 This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
 "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
 TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
 BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
 HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
 MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Acknowledgement

 Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
 Internet Society.

Widjaja & Elwalid Informational [Page 12]

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