Traffic conditioner: upper bound for the spacer overflow probability

Abstract

The current challenge for telecommunication networks is to offer new types of services. To achieve this, somehow traffic has to be conditioned. A spacer is a token bucket traffic conditioner that reshapes flows according to a periodic profile. Packets are delayed until they can be inserted according to this profile. This short paper concentrates on packet discard by overflow in the spacer. An upper bound for the overflow probability is given, valid even when it is fully loaded. It shows the ratio of discarded packets is of the same order than the ratio of out-of-profile packets.