AN EFFICIENT ATM NETWORK ARCHITECTURE WITH A DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ESTIMATION AND ALLOCATION SCHEME

An important issue in accelerating the introduction of ATM networks is to offer more convenient access to the customer and a more efficient ATM system architecture. Regarding the first point, ATM network custom ers are currently inconvenienced by the need to declare traffic parame ters, such as peak and average cell rates to the network provider befo re using the network. However, it is difficult for a customer to predi ct traffic parameters. This paper proposes a new ATM system with a dyn amic bandwidth estimation and allocation scheme. This eliminates the n eed for traffic parameter declaration, and realizes more convenient AT M service. The proposed ATM system is a ring network. Bandwidth estima tion is carried out by the ''Network Server'' located on the ring netw ork. The estimation is achieved by observing the parameters closely re lated to media access control (MAC) protocols of LAN/MAN systems. Base d on an estimation of customer traffic, the ''Network Server'' effecti vely allocates the bandwidth to each customer. This realizes a more ef ficient ATM network.