CLR in multicast ATM switches with shared memory and buffer management

The cell loss ratio (CLR) in a multicast ATM switch with completely shared buffer memory is studied in this paper by means of computer simulations. Two CLRs are defined, one from master-cell loss and another from copy-cell loss viewpoint. Various buffer management schemes based on the general pushout principle are considered with space and/or time priority for multicast cells. Our initial results indicate that, (1) with and without buffer management, multicast traffic may have worse impact than unicast traffic on the CLRs; (2) assigning space priority to multicast cells will not significantly decrease the CLRs and (3) assigning time priority to multicast cells may even greatly increase the CLRs. Therefore, for the same switch throughput, more buffer space might be required in shared buffer ATM switches to support multicast traffic.