Equivalent bandwidth and related admission criteria for ATM systems—a performance study

Abstract

Abstract The concept of the equivalent bandwidth of a source seems highly attractive for characterizing ATM traffic sources as it can be used to treat constant as well as variable bit rate sources within a common framework. In this paper we review the concept of equivalent bandwidth based on asymptotic results and study the performance of a few admission criteria which use this concept in one way or another. A major finding is that with appropriate refinements to account for the possible statistical multiplexing gain at small to moderate buffer sizes, the well‐known conservatism of the asymptotic equivalent bandwidth based criteria can be overcome. We also discuss how these criteria would perform in practical situations where the traffic sources are incompletely characterized, or where they are specified in terms of leaky‐bucket based traffic descriptors.