Fluid traffic modelling in simulation of a call admission control scheme for ATM networks

Simulating traffic for an ATM network may be very time consuming due to the large amount of transmitted cells, if traditional simulation modelling at the cell level is employed. A possible means to speed up the simulations is to model the traffic at a higher abstraction level. We evaluate different simulation modelling techniques on a scheme for call admission control in ATM networks. By generating simulation events only at the start and end of each constant-rate traffic burst, up to 85% reduction of the simulation time was obtained, while keeping the validity of the simulation model. This opens new possibilities to simulate large and complex networks, with large volumes of high-speed traffic. In particular, this leads us one step closer to simulating network performance in real time as a support to network management functions.