On buffer dimensions and static rate-control in broadband ATM networks

Issues concerning the effectiveness of static rate-control in terms of alleviating the buffering need within an ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) broadband network are addressed. Static rate-control refers to the limiting of the peak rate of any individual traffic source to a fraction of the link bandwidth via a spread factor S which specifies the spacing between consecutive cell transmissions. It is shown that, when S is small so that cell losses occur in the region of the large queue, the required buffer size scales proportionally with the job size and can only be reduced roughly linearly when the spread factor S is increased. However, when S is sufficiently large so that the so-called `block-limited´ operation region is reached, then only a very small buffer of several tens of cells will be required regardless of the job size