A deterministic fluid model for cell loss in ATM networks

The cell loss suffered by a data stream in an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network is studied using its loss function L(μ,β). This is the number of cells lost if the stream were allocated a transmission bandwidth of μ cells per second and a buffer of β cells. Properties of the loss function are derived. Two popular allocation schemes are studied: the fixed-rate-fixed-buffer scheme and the leaky bucket scheme. An example suggests how the loss function might be used to relate pricing of bandwidth and buffer resources to the resulting cell loss