Analyzing Router Performance Using Network Calculus With External Measurements

In this paper, the authors present results from an extensive measurement study of various hardware and (virtualized) software routers using several queueing strategies, i.e., First-Come-First-Served and Fair Queueing. In addition to well-known metrics such as packet forwarding performance, per packet processing time, and jitter, they apply network calculus models for performance analysis. This includes the Guaranteed Rate model for Integrated Services as well as the Packet Scale Rate Guarantee model for Differentiated Services. Using a measurement approach that provides a means to estimate rate and error term of a real node, they propose an interpretation of router performance based on these parameters taking packet queueing and scheduling into account.