Fast bandwidth reservation scheme with multi-link and multi-path routing in ATM networks

The authors propose a burst level bandwidth reservation scheme which is appropriate for an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network that supports the transfer of high-speed burst traffic. The proposed scheme utilizes multiple links and multiple paths in a network to transfer individual bursts, thereby increasing network efficiency. As the link and path selection is implemented on a burst-by-burst basis, instead of the cell-by-cell basis used in the conventional multilink approach, the proposed scheme does not require a cell-by-cell distributor and out-of-order cell delivery is avoided, which was the disadvantage of the conventional cell-by-cell multilink approach. Performance evaluation showed that the delay and blocking probability characteristics are greatly improved, as the number of links between each pair of adjacent nodes and the number of source-destination paths increase. For example, around 40% link utilizations are achieved with 16 multiple links, while the conventional single-link schemes yield only to 1% link utilization to guarantee the same quality requirements. It is shown that the proposed scheme works well if the round-trip propagation delay is less than about 10% of the burst duration