Analysis of a Rate-Based Access Control Mechanism for High-speed Networks

Abstract

In this paper we study a rate-based access control mechanism for High-speed networks, based on the “buffered leaky bucket” scheme. The study is carried out in discrete time and assumes an ATM environment, where only fixed size packets or cells are transmitted over the network. Since cell arrivals often correspond to the segmentation of large user packets into many cells, or the superposition of a number of cells coming from different logical connections routed over the same path in the network, we consider a batch arrival process to represent such arrival patterns. With batch arrival processes, the impact of other factors such as burstiness of the source and packet length variations can be effectively captured. The distribution of batch sizes is arbitrary, while the time between arrivals of successive batches is taken to be geometrically distributed. The analysis is based on matrix analytic techniques, but the particular structure of the system allows for major simplifications. In particular, we show that the problem can be partitioned, hence greatly reducing its dimensionality. We also show that the standard iterative approach required by the matrix analytic solution method can be replaced by an exact recursive procedure. This greatly increases the range of systems that can be handled by the method. From these results, we obtain both the queue length distribution at the access point and the distribution of the interdeparture time from the leaky bucket. A number of numerical examples are provided that illustrate the influences of the various system parameters. © 1993 IEEE.