Determination of traffic descriptors for VPs carrying delay-sensitive traffic

In this paper we address the problem of determining source traffic descriptors for virtual path connections formed by a number of delay-sensitive virtual channel connections. In order to obtain a virtual path connection which allows an efficient use of the network resources, traffic shaping should be performed at the origin of the connection to reduce its burstiness. However, a conventional shaping process in conjunction with FIFO multiplexing introduces delays that may be too long, especially for delay-sensitive connections offering a low cell rate, such as phone calls or video telephony. To solve this trade-off, we propose a shaping algorithm called dual cell spacing, which allows to obtain small shaping delays and an efficient use of the network resources at the same time. Furthermore, we give simple dimensioning rules for the source traffic descriptors of the shaped virtual path. Such a dimensioning is not straightforward if traffic shaping is omitted. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.