Equilibrium in Size-Based Scheduling Systems
Sebastien Soudan19
, Dinil Mon Divakaran19
, Eitan Altman20
and Pascale Vicat-Blanc Primet19 
| (19) |
INRIA / Université de Lyon / ENS Lyon, |
Abstract
Size-based scheduling is advocated to improve response times of small flows. While researchers continue to explore different
ways of giving preferential treatment to small flows without causing starvation to other flows, little focus has been paid
to the study of stability of systems that deploy size-based scheduling mechanisms. The question on stability arises from the
fact that, users of such a system can exploit the scheduling mechanism to their advantage and split large flows into multiple
small flows. Consequently, a large flow in the disguise of small flows, may get the advantage aimed for small flows. As the
number of misbehaving users can grow to a large number, an operator would like to learn about the system stability before
deploying size-based scheduling mechanism, to ensure that it won’t lead to an unstable system. In this paper, we analyse the
criteria for the existence of equilibria and reveal the constraints that must be satisfied for the stability of equilibrium
points. Our study exposes that, in a two-player game, where the operator strives for a stable system, and users of large flows
behave to improve delay, size-based scheduling doesn’t achieve the goal of improving response time of small flows.
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