Jitter control in QoS networks

We study jitter control in networks guaranteeing quality of service (QoS). Jitter measures variability of delivery times in packet streams. We propose on-line algorithms that control jitter and compare their performance to the best possible (by an off-line algorithm) for any given arrival sequence. For delay jitter, where the goal is to minimize the difference between delay times of different packets, we give an on-line algorithm using buffer size of 2B which guarantees the same delay-jitter as an off-line algorithm using buffer space B. We show that 2B space is the minimum space required by any on-line algorithm to provide delay-jitter related to the best possible delay-jitter using B buffer space. We also show that the guarantees made by our on-line algorithm hold even for distributed implementations, where the total buffer space is distributed along the path of the connection, provided that the input stream satisfies a certain simple property. For rate jitter, where the goal is to minimize the difference between inter-arrival times, we develop an on-line algorithm using a buffer of size 2B+h for any h≥1, and compare its jitter to the jitter of an optimal off-line algorithm using buffer size B. Our algorithm guarantees that the difference is bounded by a term proportional to B/h. We also prove that 2B space is necessary for on-line algorithms with non-trivial guarantees for rate-jitter control.