A MAC protocol for IP differentiated services in a WDM metropolitan area network

This paper presents a Media Access Control (MAC) protocol for a WDM passive optical star. The protocol supports scalable service differentiation for I nternet traffic in the spirit of the IETF's Diffserv architecture. We descr ibe the functional elements of the protocol (signaling, arbitration, servic e disciplines and buffer management techniques) and the way they interact t o support the Diffserv's Expedited Forwarding (EF) PHB and Assured Forwardi ng (AF) PHB group, where PHB stands for Per-Hop-Behavior. Extensive simulat ion results give quantitative estimations of the performance of the protoco l under combined EF/AF traffic.