Deadline Enables In-Order Flowlet Switching for Load Balancing

Abstract

Fine granularity can greatly enhance load balancing opportunities, but packet reordering is still a challenge. In this paper, we propose EDFLet, a flowlet switching mechanism that uses deadlines to achieve in-order flowlet-level load balancing. We assign a deadline value to each packet of a flowlet based on its burst interval, which ensures that an earlier flowlet completes transmission before the next flowlet of the same flow. We also apply Earliest Deadline First scheduling at the switch, which guarantees that packets that packets meet their deadlines and arrive in order at the receiver. Our experimental results show that EDFLet performs better than existing methods in both symmetric and asymmetric topologies.