Timeslot Queueing and Forwarding Mechanism

IP/MPLS networks use packet switching (with the feature store-and- forward) and are based on statistical multiplexing. Statistical multiplexing is essentially a variant of time division multiplexing, which refers to the asynchronous and dynamic allocation of link timeslot resources. In this case, the service flow does not occupy a fixed timeslot, and the length of the timeslot is not fixed, but depends on the size of the packet. Statistical multiplexing has certain challenges and complexity in meeting deterministic QoS, and its delay performance is dependent on the used queueing mechanism. This document further describes a generic time division multiplexing scheme for layer-3 in an IP/MPLS networks, called timeslot queueing and forwarding (TQF) mechanism. TQF is an enhancement based on TSN TAS and allows the data plane to create a flexible timeslot mapping scheme based on available timeslot resources. It defines a cyclic period consisting of multiple timeslots where a flow is assigned to be transmited within one or more dedicated timeslots. The objective of TQF is to better handle large scaling requirements.