A dynamic reservation protocol for integrating CBR/VBR/ABR traffic over IEEE 802.14 HFC networks

We propose and analyze a novel dynamic reservation protocol for integrating constant bit rate (CBR), variable bit rate (VBR) and available bit rate (ABR) traffic over hybrid fibre/cable (HFC) networks. This protocol allows a VBR station to capture isochronous channels on a bandwidth on demand basis. To enhance channel utilization, both the capturing probability and the bandwidth available for reservation requests are adjusted dynamically. We also propose an effective method to provide ABR service such that non-time sensitive data traffic can only be transmitted over the residual bandwidth of the time-sensitive CBR and VBR traffic. Simulation results indicate that the proposed protocol gives performance close to the ideal results, is efficient in terms of bandwidth utilization, and provides the desired ABR service characteristics.