Traffic characterization and switch utilization using a deterministic bounding interval dependent traffic model

Compressed digital video is one of the most important types of traffic in future integrated services networks. It is difficult to support this class of traffic since, on one hand, compressed video is bursty, while on the other hand, it requires performance guarantees from the network. The common belief is that we are unlikely to achieve a high network utilization while providing performance guarantees to such bursty sources. The authors introduce a new deterministic bounding interval-dependent (D-BIND) traffic model, together with tight analysis techniques, to explore the possibility of providing deterministic performance guarantees to VBR traffic while still achieving a reasonable network utilization. The D-BIND model consists of a family of rate-interval pairs where the rate is a bounding rate over the interval length. The model captures the intuitive property that over longer interval lengths, a source may be bounded by a rate lower than its peak rate and closer to its long-term overage rate. While the D-BIND model is a general deterministic model that can be used to characterize a wide variety of sources, the authors focus on MPEG-compressed video. Using two 10 minute traces, they demonstrate the effectiveness of the new model and show that, contrary to common belief, reasonable network utilization can be achieved for compressed video, even when deterministic guarantees are provided.