Design and evaluation of a smart congestion-level indicator for a large group of queues in ATM networks

In cell (and/or packet) switching networks offering multi-category cell transportation services, it is highly desirable to use a single congestion-level indicator (CI) for a group of queues. This reduces the amount of the flow of network management and control information across different components and sub-components of a nodal switch and across the network. Simple CI, like the maximum of the CIs of the queues in a group, causes reduced utilization of the storage resources distributed throughout the network. Hence, it gives a false indication regarding the availability of network resources. Also, it adds a high overhead especially when the number of queues to be monitored is large (i.e., ⩾100). Some intelligent CIs used to overcome these problems are discussed and evaluated