Bandwidth allocation in a channelised ATM network

ATM is now generally seen as the ultimate solution for the proposed broadband integrated services digital network (BISDN). In the BISDN, it is likely that the transmission facilities will be subdivided into fixed rate channels at approximately 150 Mb/s. A fiber optic link operating at several Gb/s is able to support many channels. The collection of channels multiplexed on the same transmission link is known as a channel group. There might be several links interconnecting two network nodes, using one or more physical routes. A set of links interconnecting two nodes is called a link group. A higher efficiency can be achieved as a result of a smaller source bandwidth/channel bandwidth ratio if all the channels within a channel group or a link group are utilised as a single digital pipe. The various ways of sharing the bandwidth of a link group as proposed by a number of researchers and some other variations are described. The comparative performance of these bandwidth sharing schemes is deduced from the analysis of a statistical multiplexer