Advanced mechanisms for available rate usage in ATM and differentiated services networks

The available bit rate (ABR) service category was defined for ATM networks in order to provide a minimal guaranteed rate while letting a user exploit additional unused capacity from other service categories. In this paper, experiences with an implementation of a driver enabling ABR support and the steps needed to integrate it in an end system are described. Furthermore, the deployment of ABR in an xDSL environment is discussed. Additionally, an approach is presented that transfers the idea of using the available rate from ATM to IP networks based on differentiated services. A new forwarding behavior is proposed and evaluated by simulations.