Impact analysis of packet-level scheduling on an ATM shared-memory switch

This paper evaluates the additional buffer requirements of an ATM shared-memory switch using packet-level (store-and-forward) rather than cell-level (cut-through) service scheduling. Packet-level scheduling is important to tag and IP switching for multipoint-to-one services; it allows different connections to be merged into a single virtual connection to reduce routing complexity. Cisco Systems will incorporate packet-level scheduling in their LightStream 1010 ATM switch using a feature upgrade card possessing per flow queueing; we thus specifically consider the LightStream 1010 architecture in our analysis.