Use-it or Lose-it Policies for the Available Bit Rate (ABR) Service in ATM Networks

TL;DR

This paper examines the design and impact of Use-It-or-Lose-It policies in ABR ATM networks, highlighting their role in managing bandwidth allocation and robustness.

Contribution

It introduces and evaluates UILI policies, demonstrating their influence on ABR service performance and network robustness.

Findings

UILI policies improve bandwidth utilization.

They enhance robustness against network failures.

Performance evaluation compares different UILI alternatives.

Abstract

The Available Bit Rate (ABR) service has been developed to support 21st century data applications over Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). The ABR service uses a closed-loop rate-based traffic management framework where the network divides left-over bandwidth among contending sources. The ATM Forum traffic management group also incorporated open-loop control capabilities to make the ABR service robust to temporary network failures and source inactivity. An important problem addressed was whether rate allocations of sources should be taken away if sources do not use them. The proposed solutions, popularly known as the Use-It-or-Lose-It (UILI) policies, have had significant impact on the ABR service capabilities. In this paper we discuss the design, development, and the final shape of these policies and their impact on the ABR service. We compare the various alternatives through a performance evaluation.