Performance study of ATM multicast switching systems

We evaluate the performance of an N × N ATM discrete time multicast switch model with input queueing operating under two input access disciplines. First we present the analysis for the case of a purely random access discipline and subsequently we concentrate on a cyclic priority access based on a circulating token ring. In both cases, we focus on two HOL (head-of-line) packet service disciplines. Under the first (one-shot transmission discipline), all the copies generated by each HOL packet seek simultaneous transmission during the same time slot. Under the second service discipline (call-splitting), all HOL copies that can be transmitted in the same time slot are released while blocked copies compete for transmission in subsequent slots. In our analysis the performance measures introduced are the average packet delay in the input buffers as well as the maximum throughput of the switch. A significant part of the analysis is based on matrix geometric techniques. Finally, numerical results are presented and compared with computer simulations.