VP formulation and dynamic routing in ATM networks

The virtual path (VP) concept in ATM networks simplifies network structure, traffic control and resource management. For VP formulation, a VP can carry traffic of the same type (the separate scheme) or of different types (the unified scheme). For VP adjustment, a certain amount of bandwidth can be dynamically assigned (reserved) to VPs, where the amount (the bandwidth incremental/decremental size) is a predetermined system parameter. In this paper, we study least loaded path-based dynamic routing schemes with various residual bandwidth definitions under different bandwidth allocation (VP formulation and adjustment) schemes. In particular, we evaluate the call blocking probability and VP set-up processing load with varying (bandwidth) incremental sizes. Also, we investigate numerically how the use of VP trades the blocking probability with the processing load. It is found that the unified scheme could outperform the separate scheme in certain incremental sizes. Moreover, we propose two ways to reduce the processing load without increasing the blocking probability. Using these methods, the separate scheme always outperforms the unified scheme.