BURST REDUCING SERVERS IN ATM NETWORKS

We study a stream of traffic or message as it is transferred over an A TM connection consisting of burst reducing servers. A message is model ed as a deterministic fluid flow, and an ATM node is modeled as a serv er which allocates bandwidth to messages. A message's burstiness curve b(mu) is the buffer size needed to prevent cell loss if it is served at rate mu. A server is burst reducing if its output message is always less bursty than the input message. Two popular bandwidth allocation schemes - the fixed rate and the leaky bucket server - are shown to be burst reducing. We also present a new class of burst reducing servers , the affine servers. We derive buffer requirements along a multi-hop connection and the final fluid flow reaching the destination as a mess age goes through a sequence of burst reducing servers. Finally, we sug gest an approach to defining service quality.