Comparative performance study of space priority mechanisms for ATM networks

Priorities for buffer access, also called space priorities, are discussed in connection with the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), which is widely accepted as the basis for the future broadband ISDN. The introduction of priorities enables the ATM layer to adapt the quality of the cell transfer to the quality of service requirements of the specific broadband ISDN services in order to improve the utilization of the network resources. A description is given of different space priority mechanisms and their performance evaluation. A comparative performance study of these concepts is given, indicating the good performance characteristics of a simple buffering scheme called partial buffer sharing