Parallel communications for ATM network control and management

Abstract

This paper describes an end-to-end parallel communications scheme based on a vector routing algorithm (VRA) for ATM network control and management. An information string is partitioned into m parts, which are then coded into k > m parts and sent out on k separate subchannels to the receiver. When m of the k parts are received correctly, the original information can be reconstructed. Two desirable effects are achieved in the context of ATM traffic control: (1) the burstiness of the source traffic can be smoothed out by the partition process; (2) the quality of service in terms of error, loss and delay can be controlled using the number of redundant routes k — m as a control parameter. Our results show that VRA is especially suitable for services with highly bursty traffic. We argue that several network management issues, including reliability, evolution and integration, security, and administration and billing can be addressed in a simple manner using the VRA framework.