Behavior of various switch mechanisms for the ABR service in the presence of persistent and dynamic traffic

Many applications, mainly handling data transfer, have the ability to reduce their sending rate if the network requires them to do so. Likewise, they may wish to increase their sending rate if there is extra bandwidth available within the network. This kind of applications is supported by an ATM layer service called the available bit rate service (ABR). Applications using the ABR service can expect the following quality of service commitments from the network: 1. The available bandwidth is fairly distributed among all active ABR connections. 2. A minimum cell rate that is agreed upon during the connection establishment phase. 3. Only a preset fraction of the sent celIs can be dropped as long as the sending behavior of the application conforms to the negotiated values.