Statistical multiplexing of self-similar VBR videoconferencing traffic

ATM based telecommunication networks are designed to obtain high resource utilization by means of statistical multiplexing of traffic sources corresponding to heterogeneous multimedia services. As highlighted by recent measurements and statistical studies, these applications are quite different from traditional narrowband services. Particularly, self similarity and long range dependence, that characterise the bursty nature of the traffic pattern, have been pointed out as a very predominant characteristic in the design of new networks. In order to achieve an efficient resource utilisation, peak rate allocation must be substituted by a type of dynamic rate allocation. This paper presents a dynamic bandwidth allocation method that employs linear prediction of the input rate based on self-similar modelling of data. The performances of the proposed strategy, in terms of multiplexing gain for reasonable values of cell loss rate and queuing delay, have been evaluated considering experimental data collected over a DQDB MAN during a multiparty videoconferencing session.