Management of cell delay variation in ATM networks

Cells progressing along a virtual connection in an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network experience random delays, for instance, due to queuing in multiplexing stages. These random delays generally induce an alteration in the initial time structure of any cell stream passing through the network. This phenomenon is known as cell delay variation (CDV). Its basic effects, namely clumping and dispersion, are reviewed, and their networking aspects are analyzed. In the case of clumping, how its impact on peak cell rate control can be limited is studied. For this purpose, the concept of cell spacing, which can be performed by the so-called spacer-controller, is used. The use of the spacer-controller can efficiently reduce the magnitude of clumping while moderately increasing that of dispersion