Peak rate regulation maintains service quality in ATM LAN/WAN interconnection

Cell delay variations can cause a cell stream traversing an ATM LAN to occasionally exceed a connection's negotiated peak cell rate at the entry point to an ATM WAN, resulting in undesired cell discard. The article shows through analysis and simulation that peak rate regulation enables a traffic source to maintain a desired service quality despite changes in LAN usage. This approach promises to lower an ATM WAN user's communications costs by allowing the user to pay only for actual delay variations, rather than worst case delay variations.<>