Managing bandwidth in ATM networks with bursty traffic

Abstract

Three approaches to the bandwidth management problem that have been proposed and studied by various groups are reviewed to illustrate three distinctly different approaches and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Based on these approaches, a bandwidth management and congestion control scheme for asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks that supports both point-to-point and one-to-many multicast virtual circuits is proposed. It is shown that the method can handle fully heterogeneous traffic and can be effectively implemented. The algorithm for making virtual circuit acceptance decisions is straightforward and fast, and the hardware mechanisms needed to implement buffer allocation and traffic monitoring at the user-network interface have acceptable complexities. It is also shown, through numerical examples, that the approach can achieve reasonable link efficiencies even in the presence of very bursty traffic. No advance reservation required, simplifying the interface between the network and the user and avoiding an initial network round trip delay before data can be transmitted.