Burst reducing servers in ATM networks

The authors study a stream of traffic or message as it is transferred over an ATM connection consisting of burst reducing servers. A message is modeled as a deterministic fluid flow, and an ATM node is modeled as a server which allocates bandwidth to messages. A message’s burstiness curve b(μ) is the buffer size needed to prevent cell loss if it is served at rate μ. A server is burst reducing if its output message is always less bursty than the input message. Two popular bandwidth allocation schemes-the fixed rate and the leaky bucket server-are shown to be burst reducing. The authors also present a new class of burst reducing servers, the affine servers. They derive buffer requirements along a multi-hop connection and the final fluid flow reaching the destination as a message goes through a sequence of burst reducing servers. Finally, the authors suggest an approach to defining service quality.