Dynamic channel assignment in integrated-services cable network

The authors propose a dynamic channel assignment strategy for an integrated-services cable system. The strategy allows the dynamic sharing of channels among the three types of video traffic: real-time traffic, broadcast traffic and delayable traffic. It can greatly increase the channel utilization without affecting service requirements. Broadcast video programs are preplanned; thus, they always get channels when they are ready to broadcast. Real-time traffic is allocated with a nominal number of channels that guarantees the real-time traffic to have a blocking probability no larger than some specified requirement. Delayable requests, once accepted, have a guaranteed delivery