Performance analysis of virtual circuit connections for bursty data sources in ATM networks

ATM is a packet-like transmission mode that has been proposed for BISDN. It is characterized by an asynchronous slotted transmission mechanism that provides a high bandwidth, low delay connection-oriented transport service to the end user. In this paper, the authors provide an analytical approach for determining the performance of a virtual circuit connection for data transmission in a high-speed ATM network with finite buffers at the network nodes. The analysis assumes that the netwrok operates using the best effort delivery strategy and that the end-to-end virtual circuit is responsible for guaranteeing the integrity of the connection. Since the normal Markovian assumptions do not apply, a concise exact solution is impossible to obtain. This provides motivation for developing approximate technqiues such as those found in Whitt’s QNA paper that allows the use of general distributions for the traffic streams and service times. However, even these techniques assume infinite buffer capacities and hence cannot model buffer overflow. The authors have therefore developed a hybrid model that allows them to incorporate finite buffers at the nodes. This enables the authors to study the effect on the performance of both link errors and buffer overflow in conjunction with an end-to-end packet loss recovery scheme.