An adaptive buffer allocation mechanism for token bucket flow control

In this paper, a dynamic mechanism for per-flow buffer allocation is proposed and analyzed in a multi-flow environment with token bucket flow control. The mechanism detects burstiness of data traffic by measuring the relative rates of token bucket draining and data arrival, and adjusts the per-flow data buffer size accordingly. By exploiting variations in burstiness among a large group of users, this mechanism increases buffer allocation for users with instantaneous high traffic demand while decrease buffer allocation for users with instantaneous low traffic demand. Our results show a substantial benefit in reducing packet loss with this mechanism, especially when the variance of traffic among users is outstanding. In addition, this buffer size adaptation significantly reduces the signaling overheads for the negotiation and change of the token bucket parameters between the two network elements. The mechanism can be applied widely where there is token bucket flow control, such as between the SGSN and the PCU of a GPRS network.