Cell-by-cell round robin service discipline for ATM networks

Abstract

Multimedia applications generate network traffic that requires stringent per-connection performance guarantees, in terms of throughput, delay, jitter and packet loss. To guarantee such performance requirements, the network must maintain two levels of control: connection admission control (CAC) at the connection level and service discipline at the packet level. In this paper we present a new service discipline for statistical, deterministic and best-effort services in ATM networks. This discipline, the Cell-by-Cell Round Robin (CRR), uses the round robin idea to provide fairness among the different users and isolation between them. We show that by guaranteeing a minimum service rate for a connection, its end-to-end delay can be bounded and greatly reduced. Moreover, fixed resources are needed at all nodes in the path from source to destination. This discipline achieves flexibility in supporting different QoS requirements, and provides a policing mechanism for misbehaving users and facilitates the pricing process.