Improved loss calculations at an ATM multiplexer

In this paper we develop a simple and accurate analytical technique to determine the loss probability at an access node to an ATM network. This is an important problem from the point of view of admission control and network design. The arrival processes we analyze are the Markov modulated Poisson processes (MMPP) and the Markov modulated fluid (MMF) processes which are important in modeling various traffic types, such as voice, video, and still images. Our hybrid analytical technique combines results from large buffer theories and quasi-stationary approaches to analyze the loss probability of a finite buffer queue. Our technique is shown to be valid even for heterogeneous sources. We also show that capacity allocation based on the popular effective bandwidth scheme can lead to considerable underutilization of the network, and that allocating bandwidth based on our model can improve the utilization significantly. We provide numerical results for different types of traffic and validate our model via simulations