Bandwidth reservations by maximal matching algorithms

A maximal matching algorithm switches packets through a cross-bar with the speed-up of two without blocking them. Namely, traffic will go through the cross-bar controlled by a maximal matching algorithm if its outputs are not overloaded. Consequently, bandwidth reservations with delay guarantees are simple to provide. We propose a protocol for distributed bandwidth reservations, where users check the communication availability among themselves. It will be also shown that maximal matching algorithms cannot utilize full cross-bar capacity for some particular traffic patterns.