Charging schemes for ATM networks based on virtual effective bandwidths

We propose charging schemes for ATM networks based on the concept of virtual effective bandwidths (VEB). The VEBs were initially developed by the authors to support real-time connection admission control (CAC) in a framework where traffic sources with different quality of service (QoS) requirements are multiplexed into the same finite length queue. The VEBs allow different QoS requirements to be related which is important for charging purposes. We propose three charging schemes which can be included in real-time CAC: the first one depends solely on the resource requirements of the call; the second is dependent on resource as well as QoS requirements of the call; and the third is dependent on the current traffic intensity of the other connections also.