On the Validity of Credit-Based Shaper Delay Guarantees in Decentralized Reservation Protocols

Abstract: Resource reservation is a fundamental mechanism for ensuring quality of service in time-sensitive networks, which can be decentralized by using reservation protocols. In the Ethernet technology Time-Sensitive Networking, this has been proposed in conjunction with the Credit-Based Shaper. For the reservation, the standards assume a maximum worst-case latency bound at each hop. However, we will show through formal analysis and simulation that these worst-case latency bounds are not safe. To face this, we propose an extension to the current standards to allow the reservation of time-sensitive traffic with reliable latency guarantees. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated through simulations of both synthetic and industrial networks. Finally, by providing additional information about neighboring devices, we could further increase the maximum reservable traffic by up to 20% in our test cases.