Various formulations have been proposed to analyse of the statistical behav
iour of multimedia traffic over an ATM switch of infinite capacity. The aut
hors present different approaches for calculating the cell loss probability
of a finite buffer queue. They first model an ATM traffic source using a t
wo-state Markoy-modulated Bernoulli process (MMBP), and then calculate the
cell loss probability of a finite ATM buffer queue fed with N such traffic
sources using different approaches. Numerical comparison confirms that all
these approaches yield similar results. The first two approaches are based
on the matrix geometric formulation. The authors derive the queue length di
stribution of a finite ATM buffer and solve for the state probability. The
cell loss probability is then approximated by the saturation probability (i
.e. the probability that the buffer is full, in the first approach). In the
second approach, having obtained the state probability, the authors derive
the exact expression for the cell loss probability using conditional proba
bility. The third approach is based on an approximation for the buffer cont
ent of a queueing buffer. The cell loss probability is formulated using a g
enerating function and solved by examining the smallest pole of its functio
n.