A definition of congestion: applications to ATM bandwidth management

A new approach to congestion management is explored. A traffic process is supposed to be passing through an infinite server queue. The resulting queueing process happens to follow or to track the periods of time during which the “congestion” is being built into the system, giving as a result a real time picture of the congestion introduced by this particular traffic process. This picture, called the congestion process, can be used to throttle the amount of “congestion” introduced to the ATM network, as well as to seize the on-line network resources necessary to guarantee a particular quality of service. Special emphasis is given to applications in ATM B-ISDN with deterministic service queues. Using the congestion process concept, a policing application is discussed as well as some ideas regarding the ATM bandwidth management problem