Optimal policies for ATM cell scheduling and rejection

This paper addresses the following questions related to buffer management s chemes for high speed integrated services networks: (i) given the pattern o f cell arrivals from different classes of traffic, can buffer control signi ficantly influence the effect of cell loss, and (ii) what are the "best" po licies for selecting cells for transmission from buffers in the network nod es as well as for rejecting cells when the buffers are full. The basic appr oach to answering these questions is to impute a cost of losing cells which could depend on the class of application, and to minimize this cost over t he finite or infinite time horizons. The policies we derive using this cost minimization approach are best in the sense that they minimize linear cost functions of cell losses. at each instant of time during the system's oper ation. We also show how to construct policies that minimize general cost fu nctions of cell loss rates.