A distributed merger for ATM

Several designs for a merger are possible, but a good design should fulfil the following requirements: flexibility, modularity, fair and efficient merging algorithm, small delay and small buffers. The first requirement implies that the merger should be able to cope with the specific characteristics of every block where it is needed; this means, for example, that the merger can be used either with high bit rate sources (e.g. video) or low bit rate sources (e.g. low speed data). The second requirement means that the merger should have an architecture that could be easily upgraded without significant performance degradation, in order to accommodate more sources. Finally, the last three requirements are related with the performance of the merger itself and represent the goals that the merger design should attain. The authors describe a merger distributed architecture which satisfies all the stated requirements