Bandwidth allocation and connection admission control in ATM networks

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is the transmission format for almost all future communication networks, including broadband integrated services digital networks (B-ISDN). The key feature of ATM is its high flexibility in bandwidth allocation. Instead of reserving capacity for each connection, the bandwidth is allocated on demand. As a consequence, packets (called cells in ATM terminology) might be lost. To guarantee a given quality of service (QoS), some kind of control is needed to decide whether to accept or to reject an incoming connection. A connection is accepted only if the network has sufficient resources to achieve the QoS required by the user without affecting the QoS of the existing connections. In ATM networks, connection admission control (CAC) is responsible for this decision. It is a very complex function because the traffic may vary greatly and have poorly known characteristics. This paper describes CAC procedures proposed in the literature and discusses issues related to bandwidth allocation in ATM networks. It shows that CAC and statistical multiplexing are only needed for certain connections