Controlling software router resource sharing by fair packet dropping

The paper discusses resource sharing in a software router where both bandwidth and CPU may be bottlenecks. We propose a novel fair dropping algorithm to realize per-flow max-min fair sharing of these resources. The algorithm is compatible with features like batch I/O and batch processing that tend to make classical scheduling impractical. We describe an implementation using Vector Packet Processing, part of the Linux Foundation FD.io project. Preliminary experimental results prove the efficiency of the algorithm in controlling bandwidth and CPU sharing at high speed. Performance in dynamic traffic is evaluated using analysis and simulation, demonstrating that the proposed approach is both effective and scalable.