Bandwidth allocation for connectionless traffic in ATM networks

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is the emerging standard for broadband networking (B-ISDN) with its ability to support integrated traffic (data/voice/image/video). Information is exchanged in ATM networks by prior establishment of connection between source and destination(s). This brings up the question of how one can interconnect connectionless oriented LANs and MANs (non-ATM based networks) with connection oriented ATM. Bandwidth negotiation with the ATM network to meet the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the source traffic is one of the primary concerns of internetworking LAN/MAN and ATM. The paper initially assesses existing protocols in terms of the bandwidth allocation with respect to QoS requirements. The merits and demerits of these protocols are also discussed. A new protocol, "bandwidth allocation on source demand," is proposed in which the data transfer is based on "establishing a communication channel" to the destination utilizing the bandwidth advertisement feature. The proposed protocol is more reliable, in terms of presenting source traffic to the network, and will provide better performance over existing protocols. A framework to measure the performance of the proposed protocol is identified.