Medium-term centralized virtual-path bandwidth control based on traffic measurements

The paper presents a centralized virtual path bandwidth (VPB) control scheme for ATM networks which satisfies mainly three specifications: a) optimality during a medium-term control interval, b) fast time response so as to absorb the medium-term traffic fluctuations, and c) easy implementation. The paper mainly points at the impact of direct, on-line traffic measurements on bandwidth control. The control objective is to rearrange the installed bandwidth of the virtual paths according to the offered traffic so as to minimize the maximum call blocking probability of the whole network. Network simulation shows that a sophisticated VPB controller which relies on simple measurements of the offered traffic can substantially improve the performance of an ATM network. The necessary bandwidth rearrangement time is also examined by simulation