Equivalent bandwidths of parallel communications schemes in ATM networks

The objective of a bandwidth-management and traffic-control strategy is to achieve high utilization of network resources while sustaining an acceptable grade of service for all connections. A proposed parallel communications scheme can achieve efficient network utilization by balancing and smoothing network traffic. This paper investigates the bandwidth-requirement reduction potential of the parallel communications scheme. The equivalent bandwidth requirements estimated using the fluid-flow approximation and stationary bit-rate distribution approximation are presented.