An approach to provisioning for real-time VBR video teleconferencing via end-to-end virtual path connections

We describe an approach to end-to-end resource management of video teleconferencing over an ATM-based B-ISDN. The communication network is assumed to consist of "output buffer" switches using bandwidth schedulers each having a "minimum-bandwidth" property. Individual video connections with the same physical path through the network are grouped into bundles called end-to-end virtual path connections (EE-VPCs). Every EE-VPC has an associated FIFO buffer at the user-network interface (UNI) in order to take advantage of statistical multiplexing and to simplify resource management in the network backbone. Indeed, the minimum-bandwidth property allows us to precisely specify the amount of buffer memory and transmission bandwidth required at each hop to obtain lossless transmission and bounded delay over the network backbone. An admission control policy based on this network arrangement and previously proposed models for video teleconferencing traffic is proposed.