AN EMPIRICAL-EVALUATION OF VIRTUAL CIRCUIT HOLDING TIME POLICIES IN IP-OVER-ATM NETWORKS

When carrying Internet Protocol (IP) traffic over an Asynchronous Tran sfer Mode (ATM) network, the ATM adaptation layer must determine how l ong to hold a virtual circuit opened to carry an IP datagram. In this paper we present a formal statement of the problem and carry out a det ailed empirical examination of various holding time policies taking in to account the issue of network pricing, We offer solutions for two na tural pricing models, the first being a likely pricing model of future ATM networks, while the second is based on characteristics of current networks. For each pricing model, we study a variety of simple nonada ptive policies as well as easy to implement policies that adapt to the characteristics of the IP traffic, We simulate our policies on actual network traffic, and find that policies based on LRU perform well, al though the best adaptive policies provide a significant improvement ov er LRU.