Hardware implementation of a scheduler for high performance switches with quality of service (QoS) support

Abstract

In this paper, the hardware implementation of a scheduler with QoS support is presented. The starting point is a Differentiated Service (DiffServ) network model. Each switch of this network classifies the packets in flows which are assigned to traffic classes depending of its requirements with an independent queue being available for each traffic class. Finally, the scheduler chooses the right queue in order to provide Quality of Service support. This scheduler considers the bandwidth distribution, introducing the time frame concept, and the packet delay, assigning a priority to each traffic class. The architecture of this algorithm is also presented in this paper describing their functionality and complexity. The architecture was described in Verilog HDL at RTL level. The complete system has been implemented in a Spartan-3 1000 FPGA device using ISE software from Xilinx, demonstrating it is a suitable design for high speed switches.