Scheduler for Virtualization of Links with Partial Performance Isolation

In this paper we study a scheduler for creating several virtual links on one physical link. The scheduler provides partial isolation of the performance between the virtual links in a sense that the volume of traffic offered to one virtual link may influence the performance of other virtual links, but only up to some extent. Namely, the virtual links have guaranteed boundaries of the performance characteristics, no matter what happens with other links. Contrary to schedulers with full performance isolation, the studied scheduler is partially work conserving - some heavily loaded virtual links may benefit from the light load of other virtual links. We give a description of the scheduler, compute boundaries of its performance characteristics and present the actual performance in several simulated scenarios.