Quasi-pushout cell discarding

In asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switching networks, buffers are required to accommodate traffic fluctuations due to statistical multiplexing. However, cell discarding takes place when the buffer space of a network node is used up during a traffic surge. Though pushout cell discarding was found to achieve fair buffer utilization and good cell loss performance, it is difficult to implement because of the large number of queue length comparisons. We propose quasi-pushout cell discarding which reduces the number of queue length comparisons by employing the concept of quasi-longest queue. Simulation results under bursty and imbalanced traffic conditions show that quasi-pushout can achieve comparable cell loss performance as pushout at a much lower complexity.