Burst reducing servers in ATM networks

We study a stream of traffic or message as it is transferred over an ATM connection consisting of burst reducing servers. A message is modeled as a deterministic fluid flow, and an ATM node is modeled as a server which allocates bandwidth to messages. A message's burstiness curve b() is the buffer size needed to prevent cell loss if it is served at rate. A server is burst reducing if its output message is always less bursty than the input message. Two popular bandwidth allocation schemes — the fixed rate and the leaky bucket server — are shown to be burst reducing. We also present a new class of burst reducing servers, the affine servers. We derive buffer requirements along a multi-hop connection and the final fluid flow reaching the destination as a message goes through a sequence of burst reducing servers. Finally, we suggest an approach to defining service quality.Part of this work was presented at Globecom'91, December 1991, and Infocom'93, March 1993.