Performance of a window-based token protocol supporting ATM-like bursty traffic

This study presents a novel window-based token protocol which supports two priority levels of ATM-like bursty traffic. The proposed protocol ensures that packets arriving during a given window period are always transmitted prior to those arriving during subsequent window periods. During which periods, high priority (delay-sensitive) packets are served by a nonpreemptive priority service discipline. Under this window-based token protocol, the delay bounds for packets of both priority levels are derived when the traffic streams satisfy the traffic descriptors. Hence, a call admission control policy based on delay bounds can be employed to guarantee QoS parameters such as the packet delay and packet loss-free requirement for each traffic stream. The protocol proposed herein can achieve tighter delay bounds than the IEEE 802. 5 token protocol and the timed token protocol used in FDDI, particularly for high priority bursty traffic, thereby making it highly attractive for supporting not only real-time multimedia VBR or CBR services such as in ATM networks but also ATM encapsulation such as in Cells In Frames (GIF) protocol.