Non-deterministic periodic packet streams and their impact on a finite-capacity multiplexer

This paper considers the multiplexing of nondeterministic periodic traffic sources which deliver packets periodically according to an arbitrary i.i.d. batch arrival process. The proposed traffic sources are representative of the packet-stream periodicities commonly found in high-speed packet networks such as ATM. An exact analytical technique, which entails the solution of Markov chains whose dimensions are independent of the periods associated with the input sources, is presented for the study of a finite-capacity multiplexer fed by N of the proposed traffic models. Numerical results indicate that the source periodicities have a significant impact on the multiplexers performance. In fact, for some regions of operating conditions, even a Poisson traffic assumption is shown to provide an extremely pessimistic estimate of the queue performance measured in terms of packet-loss probabilities