Design and implementation of an adaptive burst spacer for effective-rate enforcement in ABR traffic

The available bit rate (ABR) service is being designed as a low-cost transport service over ATM networks, which will be using the bandwidth remaining available after servicing connections of another, high-priority class. The penalty paid is the lack of QoS guarantees in terms of transport delays figures. Thus, an adaptive shaping mechanism is necessary for the ABR connections at each multiplexing or switching stage for effective bandwidth enforcement and adjusting their traffic profiles according to the prevailing congestion conditions. An adaptive shaping mechanism related with the ABR service is analyzed and modeled on the basis of effective rates defined for the multiplexed connections. The traffic shaper is used to enforce the contracted effective rate for the ABR class and to allocate peak rates to the high priority class (burst spacer). The traffic shaper system is presented as an implementation perspective and specific ideas concerning its hardware realization are given.