Credit-based flow control scheme that can be used to support both end-to-end and link-level flow control is becoming increasingly popular in high speed system area networks (SAN), e.g. InfiniBand networks where multiple processor nodes and I/O devices are interconnected using switched point-to-point links. By virtue of such a scheme, the downstream node sends credits to the upstream node indicating the availability of buffer spaces. Upon receiving credits, the upstream node injects packets into the networks. Performance analysis of credit-based flow control scheme plays an important role for the design and optimization of InfiniBand interconnection networks which have been widely used in many high-performance cluster, Grid and P2P computing systems. This study develops a new queueing network model for performance evaluation of credit-based flow control in InfiniBand networks. The performance metrics to be derived include the mean queue length, throughput and response time of the system. Simulation experiments have been used to validate the accuracy of the queueing network model. Results obtained from the analytical model have showed that this model can effectively evaluate the performance of credit-based flow control in InfiniBand networks.
A detailed and accurate closed queueing network model of many interacting TCP flows
