High speed networks must provide constant rate services to handle applications like telephony, audio and video, multimedia services, and real-time control. An important issue in providing constant rate services is scaleability. In this paper we propose a scaleable approach, called the reduced control complexity network, to providing constant rate service. Our approach uses an asynchronous network that guarantees lossless transport of constant rate data. First, we consider the problem of providing FIFO order, lossless and fault-free transport of one constant rate connection using asynchronous network elements. We accurately characterize the behavior of the traffic as it goes through the network. We find that the minimum buffer size required to guarantee lossless transport grows nearly linearly with the number of network elements traversed by the connection. We propose an asynchronous switch element in which each connection is allocated a logically separate buffer space. We use a non-work conserving scheduling policy to guarantee the service requirement of all connections. This simplifies the problem of reasoning about network behavior. We use a static, table-driven scheduler that can be easily implemented to work at high speeds. Finally, we address the problem of generating the schedule table to meet the service rates of connections.

Date Published: 4 November 1996
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 2917, Broadband Access Systems, (4 November 1996); doi: 10.1117/12.257351

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2917:
Broadband Access Systems
Wai Sum Lai; Indra Widjaja; Dennis Karvelas; Sam T. Jewell; Curtis A. Siller Jr.; Indra Widjaja; Dennis Karvelas, Editor(s)