ATM: bandwidth assignment and bandwidth enforcement policies

Two techniques are presented: the class-related rule and the virtual leaky bucket mechanism. It is shown that the former can effectively solve the bandwidth-assignment problem for ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) when different classes of services are multiplexed on the same network trunk. The virtual leaky bucket technique is used as a bandwidth-enforcement policy. It has the advantage of combining the policing function on each source with congestion control on the cell loss rate in the network. The implementation complexity is not cumbersome, and both techniques can be realized with existing technology at the B-ISDN (broadband integrated services digital network) transmission speed.<<ETX>>