Eligible Start-time Fair Queuing: a New Fair Queuing Policy and Its Analysis with a Stochastic Comparison Approach

We present a new Fair Queuing policy adapted to low-bandwidth ows, and preventing discrepancy which is encountered under almost all of the existing Fair Queuing policies. Unlike Packet-by-packet Generalized Processor Sharing PGPS and its version Worst-case Fair, Fair Queuing WF 2 Q which eliminates discrepancy, the proposed scheduling algorithm is computationally eecient hence feasible for high speed broadband networks. The ESFQ scheduler uses like WF 2 Q an eligibility criterion to select packets to be transmitted, and like Start-time Fair Queuing SFQ, it uses a Virtual Time based on Virtual Start tags. We rst study the classical worst-case performance indices: the fairness and the latency, and we compare them to those of the other FQ policies. Then, we introduce a performance analysis method based on the stochastic comparison and we apply it to prove that ESFQ is fairer than SFQ in a stochastic sense.