Multichannel bandwidth allocation in a broadband packet switch

  • Authors:
  • A. Pattavina

  • Affiliations:
  • Bellcore, Morristown, NJ

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
  • Year:
  • 2006

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.07

Visualization

Abstract

The problem of bandwidth allocation in a packet switch supporting broadband services is addressed. To reduce the performance constraints imposed by limiting a data link to a single broadband packet channel, the author introduces the concept of channel group as a set of broadband packet channels that is viewed as a single data-link connection by routing entities. He uses a two-step bandwidth allocation scheme. At connection setup time, a call is allocated to a channel group. At transmission time, specific channels of a group are optimally allocated to the packets destined to the group. Because of the statistical smoothing of the large number of sources served by a channel group, the traffic performance of the switch is improved. This scheme also allows super-rate switching, i.e., the support of services with peak bandwidth exceeding the capacity of a single packet channel. The author shows the feasibility of this scheme in a Batcher-banyan switch, by implementing in hardware the bandwidth allocation at transmission time. Performance improvements obtained by this scheme are also provided in different traffic environments