Abstract Middleboxes have become a vital part of modern networks by providing services such as load balancing, optimization of network traffic, and content filtering. A sequence of middleboxes comprising a logical service is called a Service Function Chain (SFC) . In this context, the main issues are to maintain an acceptable level of network path survivability and a fair allocation of the resource between different demands in the event of faults or failures. In this paper, we focus on the problems of traffic engineering, failure recovery, fault prevention, and SFC with reliability and energy consumption constraints in Software Defined Networks (SDN). These types of deployments use Fog computing as an emerging paradigm to manage the distributed small-size traffic flows passing through the SDN-enabled switches (possibly Fog Nodes). The main aim of this integration is to support service delivery in real-time, failure recovery, and fault-awareness in an SFC context. Firstly, we present an architecture for Failure Recovery and Fault Prevention called FRFP; this is a multi-tier structure in which the real-time traffic flows pass through SDN-enabled switches to jointly decrease the network side-effects of flow rerouting and energy consumption of the Fog Nodes. We then mathematically formulate an optimization problem called the Optimal Fog-Supported Energy-Aware SFC rerouting algorithm (OFES) and propose a near-optimal heuristic called Heuristic OFES (HFES) to solve the corresponding problem in polynomial time. In this way, the energy consumption and the reliability of the selected paths are optimized, while the Quality of Service (QoS) constraints are met and the network congestion is minimized. In a reliability context, the focus of this work is on fault prevention; however, since we use a reallocation technique, the proposed scheme can be used as a failure recovery scheme. We compare the performance of HFES and OFES in terms of energy consumption, average path length, fault probability, network side-effects, link utilization, and Fog Node utilization. Additionally, we analyze the computational complexity of HFES. We use a real-world network topology to evaluate our algorithm. The simulation results show that the heuristic algorithm is applicable to large-scale networks.
Recently, the authors in @cite_9 presented a scheduling and routing solution in SDN NFV time-triggered flows. In detail, they approximate the optimal solution over a corresponding static scheduling problem and solve it using ILP. As in our approach, hard constraints on the overall execution times are considered by @cite_9 . However, we point out that, unlike our approach: (i) the focus of @cite_9 is on the traffic routing and scheduling between SDN-enabled switches per time-flow, so that the resulting flow scheduler does not support, by design, failure and fault tolerance per link and switch of data time-flow; (ii) the joint flow and computing rate mapping afforded in @cite_9 is, by design, static; (iii) the scheduler in @cite_9 does not perform real-time reconfiguration rerouting, real-time traffic hosted by the serving controller; (iv) the work in @cite_9 does not consider SFC and rerouting; and (v) the scheduler in @cite_9 does not enforce per-flow QoS guarantees on the limited time minimum energy and or the minimum side-effect. Although the aforementioned solutions are interesting, however, none of them considers the problem of service chaining with respect to the energy consumption of the VMs.
@cite_9
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Providing real-time cloud services to Vehicular Clients (VCs) must cope with delay and delay-jitter issues. Fog computing is an emerging paradigm that aims at distributing small-size self-powered data centers (e.g., Fog nodes) between remote Clouds and VCs, in order to deliver data-dissemination real-time services to the connected VCs. Motivated by these considerations, in this paper, we propose and test an energy-efficient adaptive resource scheduler for Networked Fog Centers (NetFCs). They operate at the edge of the vehicular network and are connected to the served VCs through Infrastructure-to-Vehicular (I2V) TCP IP-based single-hop mobile links. The goal is to exploit the locally measured states of the TCP IP connections, in order to maximize the overall communication-plus-computing energy efficiency, while meeting the application-induced hard QoS requirements on the minimum transmission rates, maximum delays and delay-jitters. The resulting energy-efficient scheduler jointly performs: (i) admission control of the input traffic to be processed by the NetFCs; (ii) minimum-energy dispatching of the admitted traffic; (iii) adaptive reconfiguration and consolidation of the Virtual Machines (VMs) hosted by the NetFCs; and, (iv) adaptive control of the traffic injected into the TCP IP mobile connections. The salient features of the proposed scheduler are that: (i) it is adaptive and admits distributed and scalable implementation; and, (ii) it is capable to provide hard QoS guarantees, in terms of minimum maximum instantaneous rates of the traffic delivered to the vehicular clients, instantaneous rate-jitters and total processing delays. Actual performance of the proposed scheduler in the presence of: (i) client mobility; (ii) wireless fading; and, (iii) reconfiguration and consolidation costs of the underlying NetFCs, is numerically tested and compared against the corresponding ones of some state-of-the-art schedulers, under both synthetically generated and measured real-world workload traces. Service function chaining (SFC) allows the forwarding of traffic flows along a chain of virtual network functions (VNFs). Software defined networking (SDN) solutions can be used to support SFC to reduce both the management complexity and the operational costs. One of the most critical issues for the service and network providers is the reduction of energy consumption, which should be achieved without impacting the Quality of Service. In this paper, we propose a novel resource allocation architecture which enables energy-aware SFC for SDN-based networks, considering also constraints on delay, link utilization, server utilization. To this end, we formulate the problems of VNF placement, allocation of VNFs to flows, and flow routing as integer linear programming (ILP) optimization problems. Since the formulated problems cannot be solved (using ILP solvers) in acceptable timescales for realistic problem dimensions, we design a set of heuristic to find near-optimal solutions in timescales suitable for practical applications. We numerically evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms over a real-world topology under various network traffic patterns. Our results confirm that the proposed heuristic algorithms provide near-optimal solutions (at most 14 optimality-gap) while their execution time makes them usable for real-life networks. We consider the problem of resource allocation in downlink OFDMA systems for multi service and unknown environment. Due to users' mobility and intercell interference, the base station cannot predict neither the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of each user in future time slots nor their probability distribution functions. In addition, the traffic is bursty in general with unknown arrival. The probability distribution functions of the SNR, channel state and traffic arrival density are then unknown. Achieving a multi service Quality of Service (QoS) while optimizing the performance of the system (e.g. total throughput) is a hard and interesting task since it depends on the unknown future traffic and SNR values. In this paper we solve this problem by modeling the multiuser queuing system as a discrete time linear dynamic system. We develop a robust H∞ controller to regulate the queues of different users. The queues and Packet Drop Rates (PDR) are controlled by proposing a minimum data rate according to the demanded service type of each user. The data rate vector proposed by the controller is then fed as a constraint to an instantaneous resource allocation framework. This instantaneous problem is formulated as a convex optimization problem for instantaneous subcarrier and power allocation decisions. Simulation results show small delays and better fairness among users. This paper proposes a new class of online policies for scheduling in input-buffered crossbar switches. Given an initial configuration of packets at the input buffers, these policies drain all packets in the system in the minimal amount of time provided that there are no further arrivals. These policies are also throughput optimal for a large class of arrival processes which satisfy strong-law of large numbers. We show that it is possible for policies in our class to be throughput optimal even if they are not constrained to be maximal in every time slot. Most algorithms for switch scheduling take an edge based approach; in contrast, we focus on scheduling (a large enough set of) the most congested ports. This alternate approach allows for lower-complexity algorithms, and also requires a non-standard technique to prove throughput-optimality. One algorithm in our class, Maximum Vertex-weighted Matching (MVM) has worst-case complexity similar to Max-size Matching, and in simulations shows slightly better delay performance than Max-(edge)weighted-Matching (MWM). Many existing data center network (DCN) flow scheduling schemes minimize flow completion times (FCT) based on prior knowledge of flows and custom switch designs, making them hard to use in practice. This paper introduces, Pias, a practical flow scheduling approach that minimizes FCT with no prior knowledge using commodity switches. At its heart, Pias leverages multiple priority queues available in commodity switches to implement a Multiple Level Feedback Queue (MLFQ), in which a PIAS flow gradually demotes from higher-priority queues to lower-priority queues based on the bytes it has sent. In this way, short flows are prioritized over long flows, which enables Pias to emulate Shortest Job First (SJF) scheduling without knowing the flow sizes beforehand. Our preliminary evaluation shows that Pias significantly outperforms all existing information-agnostic solutions. It improves average FCT for short flows by up to 50 and 40 over DCTCP [3] and L2DCT [16]. Compared to an ideal information-aware DCN transport, p-Fabric [5], it only shows 4.9 performance degradation for short flows in a production datacenter workload. In a Fork-Join (FJ) queueing system an upstream fork station splits incoming jobs into N tasks to be further processed by N parallel servers, each with its own queue; the response time of one job is determined, at a downstream join station, by the maximum of the corresponding tasks' response times. This queueing system is useful to the modelling of multi-service systems subject to synchronization constraints, such as MapReduce clusters or multipath routing. Despite their apparent simplicity, FJ systems are hard to analyze. This paper provides the first computable stochastic bounds on the waiting and response time distributions in FJ systems. We consider four practical scenarios by combining 1a) renewal and 1b) non-renewal arrivals, and 2a) non-blocking and 2b) blocking servers. In the case of non blocking servers we prove that delays scale as O(logN), a law which is known for first moments under renewal input only. In the case of blocking servers, we prove that the same factor of log N dictates the stability region of the system. Simulation results indicate that our bounds are tight, especially at high utilizations, in all four scenarios. A remarkable insight gained from our results is that, at moderate to high utilizations, multipath routing 'makes sense' from a queueing perspective for two paths only, i.e., response times drop the most when N = 2; the technical explanation is that the resequencing (delay) price starts to quickly dominate the tempting gain due to multipath transmissions. We study the problem of non-preemptive scheduling to minimize energy consumption for devices that allow dynamic voltage scaling. Specifically, consider a device that can process jobs in a non-preemptive manner. The input consists of (i) the set R of available speeds of the device, (ii) a set J of jobs, and (iii) a precedence constraint Π among J. Each job j in J, defined by its arrival time aj, deadline dj, and amount of computation cj, is supposed to be processed by the device at a speed in R. Under the assumption that a higher speed means higher energy consumption, the power-saving scheduling problem is to compute a feasible schedule with speed assignment for the jobs in J such that the required energy consumption is minimized. This paper focuses on the setting of weakly dynamic voltage scaling, i.e., speed change is not allowed in the middle of processing a job. To demonstrate that this restriction on many portable power-aware devices introduces hardness to the power-saving scheduling problem, we prove that the problem is NP-hard even if aj = aj ′ and dj = dj ′ hold for all j,j ′∈ Jand |R|=2. If |R|<∞, we also give fully polynomial-time approximation schemes for two cases of the general NP-hard problem: (a) all jobs share a common arrival time, and (b) Π = ∅ and for any j,j ′ ∈ J, aj ≤ aj ′ implies dj ≤ dj ′. To the best of our knowledge, there is no previously known approximation algorithm for any special case of the NP-hard problem. Many existing data center network (DCN) flow scheduling schemes minimize flow completion times (FCT) based on prior knowledge of flows and custom switch functions, making them superior in performance but hard to use in practice. By contrast, we seek to minimize FCT with no prior knowledge and existing commodity switch hardware. To this end, we present PIAS, a DCN flow scheduling mechanism that aims to minimize FCT by mimicking Shortest Job First (SJF) on the premise that flow size is not known a priori. At its heart, PIAS leverages multiple priority queues available in existing commodity switches to implement a Multiple Level Feedback Queue (MLFQ), in which a PIAS flow is gradually demoted from higher-priority queues to lower-priority queues based on the number of bytes it has sent. As a result, short flows are likely to be finished in the first few high-priority queues and thus be prioritized over long flows in general, which enables PIAS to emulate SJF without knowing flow sizes beforehand. We have implemented a PIAS prototype and evaluated PIAS through both testbed experiments and ns- 2 simulations. We show that PIAS is readily deployable with commodity switches and backward compatible with legacy TCP IP stacks. Our evaluation results show that PIAS significantly outperforms existing information-agnostic schemes. For example, it reduces FCT by up to 50 and 40 over DCTCP [11] and L2DCT [27] respectively; and it only has a 4.9 performance gap to an ideal information-aware scheme, pFabric [13], for short flows under a production DCN workload. We investigate the problem of energy efficiency in TDMA link scheduling with transmission power control using a realistic SINR-based interference model, given packets of a set of links to be transmitted within a latency bound. First we formulate a fundamental optimization problem (TJSPC) that provides tunable tradeoffs between energy, throughput and latency through a single parameter β. We present both expo- nential and polynomial complexity solutions to this problem and evaluate their performance. Our results show that for moderate traffic loads, with appropriate tuning of parameters, major energy savings can be obtained without significantly sacrificing throughput. We then investigate the scheduling and power control problem with the objective of minimizing the total transmission energy cost under the constraint that all transmission requests are satisfied (JSPC-TR). We present an iterative approach to solve JSPC-TR that leverages the heuristics for TJSPC and converges rapidly to the setting of β which achieves energy efficiency while guaranteeing data delivery. We study a processing system comprised of parallel queues, whose individual service rates are specified by a global service mode (configuration). The issue is how to switch the system between various possible service modes, so as to maximize its throughput and maintain stability under the most workload-intensive input traffic traces (arrival processes). Stability preserves the job inflow–outflow balance at each queue on the traffic traces. Two key families of service policies are shown to maximize throughput, under the mild condition that traffic traces have long-term average workload rates. In the first family of cone policies, the service mode is chosen based on the system backlog state belonging to a corresponding cone. Two distinct policy classes of that nature are investigated, MaxProduct and FastEmpty. In the second family of batch policies (BatchAdapt), jobs are collectively scheduled over adaptively chosen horizons, according to an asymptotically optimal, robust schedule. The issues of nonpreemptive job processing and non-negligible switching times between service modes are addressed. The analysis is extended to cover feed-forward networks of such processing systems nodes. The approach taken unifies and generalizes prior studies, by developing a general trace-based modeling framework (sample-path approach) for addressing the queueing stability problem. It treats the queueing structure as a deterministic dynamical system and analyzes directly its evolution trajectories. It does not require any probabilistic superstructure, which is typically used in previous approaches. Probability can be superposed later to address finer performance questions (e.g., delay). The throughput maximization problem is seen to be primarily of structural nature. The developed methodology appears to have broader applicability to other queueing systems. Input Queued (IQ) switches have been very well studied in the recent past. The main problem in the IQ switches concerns scheduling. The main focus of the research has been the fixed length packet-known as cells-case. The scheduling decision becomes relatively easier for cells compared to the variable length packet case as scheduling needs to be done at a regular interval of fixed cell time. In real traffic dividing the variable packets into cells at the input side of the switch and then reassembling these cells into packets on the output side achieve it. The disadvantages of this cell-based approach are the following: (a) bandwidth is lost as division of a packet may generate incomplete cells, and (b) additional overhead of segmentation and reassembling cells into packets. This motivates the packet scheduling: scheduling is done in units of arriving packet sizes and in nonpreemptive fashion. In M.A. (2001) the problem of packet scheduling was first considered. They show that under any admissible Bernoulli i.i.d. arrival traffic a simple modification of maximum weight matching (MWM) algorithm is stable, similar to cell-based MWM. In this paper, we study the stability properties of packet based scheduling algorithm for general admissible arrival traffic pattern. We first show that the result of extends to general regenerative traffic model instead of just admissible traffic, that is, packet based MWM is stable. Next we show that there exists an admissible traffic pattern under which any work-conserving (that is maximal type) scheduling algorithm will be unstable. This suggests that the packet based MWM will be unstable too. To overcome this difficulty we propose a new class of "waiting" algorithms. We show that "waiting"-MWM algorithm is stable for any admissible traffic using fluid limit technique. We consider a multiclass multiplexer with support for multiple service classes and dedicated buffers for each service class. Under specific scheduling policies for sharing bandwidth among these classes, we seek the asymptotic (as the buffer size goes to infinity) tail of the buffer overflow probability for each dedicated buffer. We assume dependent arrival and service processes as is usually the case in models of bursty traffic. In the standard large deviations methodology, we provide a lower and a matching (up to first degree in the exponent) upper bound on the buffer overflow probabilities. We introduce a novel optimal control approach to address these problems. In particular, we relate the lower bound derivation to a deterministic optimal control problem, which we explicitly solve. Optimal state trajectories of the control problem correspond to typical congestion scenarios. We explicitly and in detail characterize the most likely modes of overflow. We specialize our results to the generalized processor sharing policy (GPS) and the generalized longest queue first policy (GLQF). The performance of strict priority policies is obtained as a corollary. We compare the GPS and GLQF policies and conclude that GLQF achieves smaller overflow probabilities than GPS for all arrival and service processes for which our analysis holds. Our results have important implications for traffic management of high-speed networks and can be used as a basis for an admission control mechanism which guarantees a different loss probability for each class. Recent studies of Internet traffic have shown that flow size distributions often exhibit a high variability property in the sense that most of the flows are short and more than half of the total load is constituted by a small percentage of the largest flows. In the light of this observation, it is interesting to revisit scheduling policies that are known to favor small jobs in order to quantify the benefit for small and the penalty for large jobs. Among all scheduling policies that do not require knowledge of job size, the least attained service (LAS) scheduling policy is known to favor small jobs the most. We investigate the M G 1 LAS queue for both, load ? < 1 and ? = 1. Our analysis shows that for job size distributions with a high variability property, LAS favors short jobs with a negligible penalty to the few largest jobs, and that LAS achieves a mean response time over all jobs that is close to the mean response time achieved by SRPT.Finally, we implement LAS in the ns-2 network simulator to study its performance benefits for TCP flows. When LAS is used to schedule packets over the bottleneck link, more than 99 of the shortest flows experience smaller mean response times under LAS than under FIFO and only the largest jobs observe a negligible increase in response time. The benefit of using LAS as compared to FIFO is most pronounced at high load. In the interference scheduling problem, one is given a set of n communication requests described by source-destination pairs of nodes from a metric space. The nodes correspond to devices in a wireless network. Each pair must be assigned a power level and a color such that the pairs in each color class can communicate simultaneously at the specified power levels. The feasibility of simultaneous communication within a color class is defined in terms of the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) that compares the strength of a signal at a receiver to the sum of the strengths of other signals. The objective is to minimize the number of colors as this corresponds to the time needed to schedule all requests. We introduce an instance-based measure of interference, denoted by I, that enables us to improve on previous results for the interference scheduling problem. We prove the upper and lower bounds in terms of I on the number of steps needed for scheduling a set of requests. For general power assignments, we prove a lower bound of @W(I ([email protected])) steps, where @D denotes the aspect ratio of the metric. When restricting to the two-dimensional Euclidean space (as in the previous work) the bound improves to @W(I [email protected]). Alternatively, when restricting to linear power assignments, the lower bound improves even to @W(I). The lower bounds are complemented by an efficient algorithm computing a schedule for linear power assignments using only O(Ilogn) steps. A more sophisticated algorithm computes a schedule using even only O(I+log^2n) steps. For dense instances in the two-dimensional Euclidean space, this gives a constant factor approximation for scheduling under linear power assignments, which shows that the price for using linear (and, hence, energy-efficient) power assignments is bounded by a factor of O([email protected]). In addition, we extend these results for single-hop scheduling to multi-hop scheduling and combined scheduling and routing problems, where our analysis generalizes the previous results towards general metrics and improves on the previous approximation factors. This paper first provides a brief survey on existing traffic offloading techniques in wireless networks. Particularly as a case study, we put forward an online reinforcement learning framework for the problem of traffic offloading in a stochastic heterogeneous cellular network (HCN), where the time-varying traffic in the network can be offloaded to nearby small cells. Our aim is to minimize the total discounted energy consumption of the HCN while maintaining the quality-of-service (QoS) experienced by mobile users. For each cell (i.e., a macro cell or a small cell), the energy consumption is determined by its system load, which is coupled with system loads in other cells due to the sharing over a common frequency band. We model the energy-aware traffic offloading problem in such HCNs as a discrete-time Markov decision process (DTMDP). Based on the traffic observations and the traffic offloading operations, the network controller gradually optimizes the traffic offloading strategy with no prior knowledge of the DTMDP statistics. Such a model-free learning framework is important, particularly when the state space is huge. In order to solve the curse of dimensionality, we design a centralized @math -learning with compact state representation algorithm, which is named @math -learning. Moreover, a decentralized version of the @math -learning is developed based on the fact the macro base stations (BSs) can independently manage the operations of local small-cell BSs through making use of the global network state information obtained from the network controller. Simulations are conducted to show the effectiveness of the derived centralized and decentralized @math -learning algorithms in balancing the tradeoff between energy saving and QoS satisfaction. We propose a novel approach to QoS for real-time traffic over wireless mesh networks, in which application layer characteristics are exploited or shaped in the design of medium access control. Specifically, we consider the problem of efficiently supporting a mix of Voice over IP (VoIP) and delay-insensitive traffic, assuming a narrowband physical layer with CSMA CA capabilities. The VoIP call carrying capacity of wireless mesh networks based on classical CSMA CA (e.g., the IEEE 802.11 standard) is low compared to the raw available bandwidth, due to lack of bandwidth and delay guarantees. Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) could potentially provide such guarantees, but it requires fine-grained network-wide synchronization and scheduling, which are difficult to implement. In this paper, we introduce Sticky CSMA CA, a new medium access mechanism that provides TDM-like performance to real-time flows without requiring explicit synchronization. We exploit the natural periodicity of VoIP flows to obtain implicit synchronization and multiplexing gains. Nodes monitor the medium using the standard CSMA CA mechanism, except that they remember the recent history of activity in the medium. A newly arriving VoIP flow uses this information to grab the medium at the first available opportunity, and then sticks to a periodic schedule, providing delay and bandwidth guarantees. Delay-insensitive traffic fills the gaps left by the real-time flows using novel contention mechanisms to ensure efficient use of the leftover bandwidth. Large gains over IEEE 802.11 networks are demonstrated in terms of increased voice call carrying capacity (more than 100 in some cases). We briefly discuss extensions of these ideas to a broader class of real-time applications, in which artificially imposing periodicity (or some other form of regularity) at the application layer can lead to significant enhancements of QoS due to improved medium access. Several networking architectures have been developed atop IEEE 802.3 networks to provide real-time communication guarantees for time-sensitive applications in industrial automation systems. The basic principle underlying these technologies is the precise transmission scheduling of time-triggered traffic through the network for providing deterministic and bounded latency and jitter. These transmission schedules are typically synthesized offline (computational time in the order of hours) and remain fixed thereafter, making it difficult to dynamically add or remove network applications. This paper presents algorithms for incrementally adding time-triggered flows in a time-sensitive software-defined network (TSSDN). The TSSDN is a network architecture based on software-defined networking, which provides real-time guarantees for time-triggered flows by scheduling their transmissions on the hosts (network edge) only. These algorithms exploit the global view of the control plane on the data plane to schedule and route time-triggered flows needed for the dynamic applications in the Industrial Internet of Things (Industry 4.0). The evaluations show that these algorithms can compute incremental schedules for time-triggered flows in subseconds with an average relative optimality of 68 . We consider the problem of designing an online scheduling scheme for a multi-hop wireless packet network with arbitrary topology and operating under arbitrary scheduling constraints. The objective is to design a scheme that achieves high throughput and low delay simultaneously. We propose a scheduling scheme that - for networks operating under primary interference constraints - guarantees a per-flow end-to-end packet delay bound of 5dj (1-ρj), at a factor 5 loss of throughput, where dj is the path length (number of hops) of flow j and ρj is the effective loading along the route of flow j. Clearly, dj is a universal lower bound on end-to-end packet delay for flow j. Thus, our result is essentially optimal. To the best of our knowledge, our result is the first one to show that it is possible to achieve a per-flow end-to-end delay bound of O(# of hops) in a constrained network. Designing such a scheme comprises two related subproblems: Global Scheduling and Local Scheduling. Global Scheduling involves determining the set of links that will be simultaneously active, without violating the scheduling constraints. While local scheduling involves determining the packets that will be transferred across active edges. We design a local scheduling scheme by adapting the Preemptive Last-In-First-Out (PL) scheme, applied for quasi-reversible continuous time networks, to an unconstrained discrete-time network. A global scheduling scheme will be obtained by using stable marriage algorithms to emulate the unconstrained network with the constrained wireless network. Our scheme can be easily extended to a network operating under general scheduling constraints, such as secondary interference constraints, with the same delay bound and a loss of throughput that depends on scheduling constraints through an intriguing "sub-graph covering" property. The inefficiency of energy usage on the Internet has become a critical problem with its rapid growth, as all network devices operate at full capacity in spite of the real traffic load. Existing studies try to develop energy efficient routings by aggregating traffic and switching underutilized devices into sleep mode. However, most existing approaches do not address the problem of routing convergence well. Since traffic changes frequently in a network, routing convergence may be triggered frequently for an energy efficient routing, which may induce routing loops and black holes, resulting in severe packet loss. In this paper, we present a fast rerouting-based (FRR-based) energy efficient routing scheme, namely GreenFRR, which leverages the technique of fast rerouting to reduce the convergence time. We first study typical fast rerouting techniques and address the challenge of guaranteeing loop-free routing. Then, we formalize the FRR-based energy efficient routing problem and prove that the problem is NP-hard. In order to solve this problem, we design heuristic algorithms to maximize the number of sleeping links. In particular, we consider link utilization ratio and path stretch in our algorithms. We evaluate our scheme by simulations on real and synthetic topologies with real and synthetic traffic traces. The results show that the power consumed by line cards achieves a saving of 40 and the convergence time can be reduced by 95 . The convergence of application domains in new systems-on-chip (SoC) results in systems with many applications with a mix of soft and hard real-time requirements. To reduce cost, resources, such as memories and interconnect, are shared between applications. However, resource sharing introduces interference between the sharing applications, making it difficult to satisfy their real-time requirements. Existing arbiters do not efficiently satisfy the requirements of applications in SoCs, as they either couple rate or allocation granularity to latency, or cannot run at high speeds in hardware with a low-cost implementation. The contribution of this paper is an arbiter called credit- controlled static-priority (CCSP), consisting of a rate regulator and a static-priority scheduler. The rate regulator isolates applications by regulating the amount of provided service in a way that decouples allocation granularity and latency. The static-priority scheduler decouples latency and rate, such that low latency can be provided to any application, regardless of the allocated rate. We show that CCSP belongs to the class of latency-rate servers and guarantees the allocated rate within a maximum latency, as required by hard real-time applications. We present a hardware implementation of the arbiter in the context of a DDR2 SDRAM controller. An instance with six ports running at 200 MHz requires an area of 0.0223 mm2 in a 90 nm CMOS process.