A simple bandwidth management strategy based on measurements of instantaneous virtual path utilization in ATM networks

A new connection admission control method based on actual virtual path traffic measurements is proposed to achieve high bandwidth efficiency for various types of traffic. The proposed method is based on the measurement of instantaneous virtual path utilization, which is defined as the total cell rate of the active virtual channels normalized by the virtual path capacity. A low-pass filter is used to determine the instantaneous virtual path utilization from crude measurements. A smoothing coefficient formula is derived as a function of peak rate of the virtual channel. The residual bandwidth is derived from the maximum instantaneous utilization observed during a monitoring period. Simulation shows that the proposed method achieves statistical multiplexing gains of up to 80% of the limit possible with optimum control for similar traffic sources. It can be implemented with very simple hardware. The admission decision is simple: the requested bandwidth is compared with the residual bandwidth. This method is therefore well suited for practical asynchronous transfer mode switching systems.