Methodologies for bandwidth allocation, transmission scheduling, and congestion avoidance in broadband ATM networks

The call types supported on high-speed packet networks vary widely in their bandwidth requirements and tolerance to message delay and loss. Various traffic sources which are likely to be integrated in broadband asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks are classified, and schemes for bandwidth allocation and transmission scheduling to meet the quality and performance objectives are reported. ATM cell-multiplexing using a dynamic time-slice (DTS) scheme which guarantees a required bandwidth for each traffic class and/or virtual circuit (VC) and which is dynamic in that it allows the different traffic classes or VCs to share the bandwidth with a soft boundary is proposed. Any bandwidth momentarily unused by a class or a VC is made available to the other traffic present in the multiplexer. The scheme guarantees a desired bandwidth to connections which require a fixed wide bandwidth. Thus, it facilitates setting up circuitlike connections in a network using the ATM protocol for transport. The DTS scheme is an efficient way of combining constant bit-rate (CBR) services with variable bit-rate (VBR) statistically multiplexed services. Methodologies for scheduling delivery of delay-tolerant data traffic within the framework of the DTS scheme are described