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Traffic Management for the Available Bit Rate (ABR) Service in ...

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CHAPTER 1<br />

INTRODUCTION AND PROBLEM STATEMENT<br />

1.1 Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) Networks<br />

With <strong>the</strong> convergence of telecommunication, enterta<strong>in</strong>ment and computer <strong>in</strong>dus-<br />

tries, computer network<strong>in</strong>g is adopt<strong>in</strong>g a new paradigm called Asynchronous Transfer<br />

Mode (ATM) [14, 22]. ATM was selected by <strong>the</strong> telecommunication (carrier) <strong>in</strong>dustry<br />

as <strong>the</strong> technology to deliver <strong>the</strong> Broadband Integrated <strong>Service</strong>s Digital Network (B-<br />

ISDN) carrier service. ATM is designed to handle di erent k<strong>in</strong>ds of communication<br />

tra c (voice, audio, video and data) <strong>in</strong> an <strong>in</strong>tegrated way. It is rst technology to<br />

promise seamless <strong>in</strong>terwork<strong>in</strong>g between <strong>the</strong> LAN and WAN network environments.<br />

The <strong>in</strong>ternational standards <strong>for</strong> ATM networks are be<strong>in</strong>g <strong>for</strong>mulated by <strong>the</strong> ATM<br />

Forum [31] and ITU-T [78].<br />

ATM uses short, xed size (53-byte) packets, called \cells" which is an attractive<br />

option because: a) <strong>the</strong> transmission time per cell is xed (which reduces <strong>the</strong> variability<br />

<strong>in</strong> queu<strong>in</strong>g delays), and b) <strong>the</strong> transmission time is small (which allows build<strong>in</strong>g<br />

pipel<strong>in</strong>ed hardware architectures to process cells <strong>in</strong> switches). The result<strong>in</strong>g low<br />

mean delay, and low delay variance characteristics are <strong>the</strong> features that facilitate<br />

cell-based voice and video transmissions. However, each cellhas vebytes (or 9.43%)<br />

1

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