Survey of unified approaches to integrated-service networks

The increasing demand for communication services, coupled with recent technological advances in communication media and switching techniques, has resulted in a proliferation of new and expanded services. Currently, networks are needed which can transmit voice, data, and video services in an application-independent fashion. Unified approaches employ a single switching technique across the entire network bandwidth, thus, allowing services to be switched in an application-independent manner. This paper presents a taxonomy of integrated-service networks including a look at N-ISDN, while focusing on unified approaches to integrated-service networks.The two most promising unified approaches are burst and fast packet switching. Burst switching is a circuit switching-based approach which allocates channel bandwidth to a connection only during the transmission of "bursts" of information. Fast packet switching is a packet switching-based approach which can be characterized by very high transmission rates on network links and simple, hardwired protocols which match the rapid channel speed of the network. Both approaches are being proposed as possible implementations for integrated-service networks. We survey these two approaches, and also examine the key performance issues found in fast packet switching. We then present the results of a simulation study of a fast packet switching network

Simulation and analytical performance studies of generic atm switch fabrics.

As technology improves exciting new services such as video phone become possible and economically viable but their deployment is hampered by the inability of the present networks to carry them. The long term vision is to have a single network able to carry all present and future services. Asynchronous Transfer Mode, ATM, is the versatile new packet -based switching and multiplexing technique proposed for the single network. Interest in ATM is currently high as both industrial and academic institutions strive to understand more about the technique. Using both simulation and analysis, this research has investigated how the performance of ATM switches is affected by architectural variations in the switch fabric design and how the stochastic nature of ATM affects the timing of constant bit rate services. As a result the research has contributed new ATM switch performance data, a general purpose ATM switch simulator and analytic models that further research may utilise and has uncovered a significant timing problem of the ATM technique. The thesis will also be of interest and assistance to anyone planning on using simulation as a research tool to model an ATM switch

PaST-NoC: A Packet-Switched Superconducting Temporal NoC

Temporal computing promises to mitigate the stringent area constraints and clock distribution overheads of traditional superconducting digital computing. To design a scalable, area- and power-efficient superconducting network on chip (NoC), we propose packet-switched superconducting temporal NoC (PaST-NoC). PaST-NoC operates its control path in the temporal domain using race logic (RL), combined with bufferless deflection flow control to minimize area. Packets encode their destination using RL and carry a collection of data pulses that the receiver can interpret as pulse trains, RL, serialized binary, or other formats. We demonstrate how to scale up PaST-NoC to arbitrary topologies based on 2x2 routers and 4x4 butterflies as building blocks. As we show, if data pulses are interpreted using RL, PaST-NoC outperforms state-of-the-art superconducting binary NoCs in throughput per area by as much as 5x for long packets.Comment: 14 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables. In press in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivit

Novel techniques in large scaleable ATM switches

Bibliography: p. 172-178.This dissertation explores the research area of large scale ATM switches. The requirements for an ATM switch are determined by overviewing the ATM network architecture. These requirements lead to the discussion of an abstract ATM switch which illustrates the components of an ATM switch that automatically scale with increasing switch size (the Input Modules and Output Modules) and those that do not (the Connection Admission Control and Switch Management systems as well as the Cell Switch Fabric). An architecture is suggested which may result in a scalable Switch Management and Connection Admission Control function. However, the main thrust of the dissertation is confined to the cell switch fabric. The fundamental mathematical limits of ATM switches and buffer placement is presented next emphasising the desirability of output buffering. This is followed by an overview of the possible routing strategies in a multi-stage interconnection network. A variety of space division switches are then considered which leads to a discussion of the hypercube fabric, (a novel switching technique). The hypercube fabric achieves good performance with an O(N.log₂N)²) scaling. The output module, resequencing, cell scheduling and output buffering technique is presented leading to a complete description of the proposed ATM switch. Various traffic models are used to quantify the switch's performance. These include a simple exponential inter-arrival time model, a locality of reference model and a self-similar, bursty, multiplexed Variable Bit Rate (VBR) model. FIFO queueing is simple to implement in an ATNI switch, however, more responsive queueing strategies can result in an improved performance. An associative memory is presented which allows the separate queues in the ATM switch to be effectively logically combined into a single FIFO queue. The associative memory is described in detail and its feasibility is shown by laying out the Integrated Circuit masks and performing an analogue simulation of the IC's performance is SPICE3. Although optimisations were required to the original design, the feasibility of the approach is shown with a 15Ƞs write time and a 160Ƞs read time for a 32 row, 8 priority bit, 10 routing bit version of the memory. This is achieved with 2µm technology, more advanced technologies may result in even better performance. The various traffic models and switch models are simulated in a number of runs. This shows the performance of the hypercube which outperforms a Clos network of equivalent technology and approaches the performance of an ideal reference fabric. The associative memory leverages a significant performance advantage in the hypercube network and a modest advantage in the Clos network. The performance of the switches is shown to degrade with increasing traffic density, increasing locality of reference, increasing variance in the cell rate and increasing burst length. Interestingly, the fabrics show no real degradation in response to increasing self similarity in the fabric. Lastly, the appendices present suggestions on how redundancy, reliability and multicasting can be achieved in the hypercube fabric. An overview of integrated circuits is provided. A brief description of commercial ATM switching products is given. Lastly, a road map to the simulation code is provided in the form of descriptions of the functionality found in all of the files within the source tree. This is intended to provide the starting ground for anyone wishing to modify or extend the simulation system developed for this thesis

SIMULATIVE ANALYSIS OF ROUTING AND LINK ALLOCATION STRATEGIES IN ATM NETWORKS

For Broadband Integrated Services Digital (B-ISDN) networks ATM is a promising technology, because it supports a wide range of services with different bandwidth demands, traffic characteristics and QoS requirements. This diversity of services makes traffic control in these networks much more complicated than in existing circuit or packet switched networks. Traffic control procedures include both actions necessary for setting up virtual connections (VC), such as bandwidth assignment, call admission, routing and resource allocation and congestion control measures necessary to maintain throughput in overload situations. This paper deals with routing and link allocation, and analyses the performance of such algorithms in terms of call blocking probability, link capacity utilization and QoS parameters. In our model the network carries out the following steps when a call is offered to the network: (1) Assign an appropriate bandwidth to an offered call (Bandwidth assignment) (2) Find a transmission path between the source and destination with enough available transmission capacity (Routing) (3) Allocate resource along that path (Link allocation) We consider an example 5-node network [7], conduct an extensive survey of routing, and link allocation algorithms. Regarding step (1) we employ the equivalent link capacity assignment presented by various interesting papers [1]-[5]. We find that the choice of routing and link allocation algorithms has a great impact on network performance, and that different routing algorithms perform best under different network load values. Shortest path routing (SPR) is a good candidate for low, alternate routing (AR) for medium and non-alternate routing (NAR) for high traffic load values. Concerning link allocation strategies, we find that partial overlap (POL) strategies that seem to be able to present near optimal performance are superior to complete sharing (CS) and complete partitioning (CP) strategies. As a further improvement of the POL scheme, we propose a 2-level link allocation algorithm, which yields highest link utilization. In this scheme, not only the accesses of different service classes to different virtual paths (VPs) are controlled, but also an individual VP's transmission capacity is optimally allocated to the service classes according to their bandwidth requirements in order to assure high link utilization. This method seems to be adjustable to the fine degree of granularity of bandwidth demands in B-ISDN networks. It is shown that in order to minimize cell loss the call level resource allocation plays a significant role: networks with the same buffer size switches display different cell loss probabilities in the nodes and impose different end-to-end delay on cells if the link allocation and routing differ. Again, we find that when traffic is tolerable by the network, SPR causes the least cell loss. This can be explained by the fact that SPR spreads the incoming calls in the network. It eagerly seeks new routes instead of utilizing the already used but still not congested routes. SPR obviously wastes more rapidly link and buffer capacity as traffic load becomes higher than the AR, which chooses a new route only when it has to, i.e. when the route of higher priority becomes congested. That is why we experience that as soon as the SPR starts loosing cells, it indicates that available resources have been consumed and it rapidly goes up to very high blocking probabilities after a small further increase of load

Performance analysis of virtual path over large-scale ATM switches.

by Tang Oo.Thesis submitted in: December 1997.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-[75]).Abstract also in Chinese.Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Background --- p.1Chapter 1.2 --- The Concept of Cross-Path Switching --- p.8Chapter 1.3 --- Contribution and Organization of Thesis --- p.12Chapter 2 --- The Virtual Path Scheduling Scheme --- p.14Chapter 2.1 --- The Trade-off Between Throughput and Concentration Loss --- p.14Chapter 2.2 --- Partition of Virtual Paths --- p.19Chapter 2.3 --- The Capacity and Route Assignment of Virtual Paths --- p.21Chapter 3 --- Performance Analysis and Simulation Results --- p.28Chapter 3.1 --- The Improvement of Concentration Loss --- p.28Chapter 3.2 --- The Throughput with Look-ahead Scheme --- p.30Chapter 3.3 --- The Throughput with Input Smoothing Scheme --- p.34Chapter 3.4 --- The Throughput with Bursty Source --- p.37Chapter 3.5 --- Buffer Dimensioning and The Cell Loss Probability Due to Buffer Overflow --- p.38Chapter 4 --- Capacity Assignment and Evaluation of Multiplexing Gain --- p.47Chapter 4.1 --- Principle of Capacity Assignment --- p.47Chapter 4.2 --- The Model of Virtual Path --- p.49Chapter 4.3 --- Capacity Assignment for CBR Service --- p.51Chapter 4.4 --- Capacity Assignment for Real-time VBR Service --- p.53Chapter 4.5 --- Capacity Assignment for Non Real-time VBR Service --- p.55Chapter 4.6 --- Capacity Matrix --- p.56Chapter 4.7 --- The Evaluation of Multiplexing Gain of Input Stage --- p.58Chapter 5 --- Discussions and Conclusions --- p.64Bibliography --- p.6

A Performance evaluation of several ATM switching architectures

The goal of this thesis is to evaluate the performance of three Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching architectures. After examining many different ATM switching architectures in literature, the three architectures chosen for study were the Knockout switch, the Sunshine switch, and the Helical switch. A discrete-time, event driven system simulator, named ProModel, was used to model the switching behavior of these architectures. Each switching architecture was modeled and studied under at least two design configurations. The performance of the three architectures was then investigated under three different traffic types representative of traffic found in B-ISDN: random, constant bit rate, and bursty. Several key performance parameters were measured and compared between the architectures. This thesis also explored the implementation complexities and fault tolerance of the three selected architectures

An Adaptive Scheme for Admission Control in ATM Networks

This paper presents a real time front-end admission control scheme for ATM networks. A call management scheme which uses the burstiness associated with traffic sources in a heterogeneous ATM environment to effect dynamic assignment of bandwidth is presented. In the proposed scheme, call acceptance is based on an on-line evaluation of the upper bound on cell loss probability which is derived from the estimated distribution of the number of calls arriving. Using this scheme, the negotiated quality of service will be assured when there is no estimation error. The control mechanism is effective when the number of calls is large, and tolerates loose bandwidth enforcement and loose policing control. The proposed approach is very effective in the connection oriented transport of ATM networks where the decision to admit new traffic is based on thea priori knowledge of the state of the route taken by the traffic