Traffic control architectures for integrated broadband networks

Future broadband ISDN networks will provide a multiplicity of services on integrated transport networks. Switching nodes, interconnected by a flexible transmission network, provide connections for voice, data and broadband services. These connections are distinguished by estimated resource requirements, traffic characteristics and design performance objectives. This paper examines alternative traffic network architectures for integrated broadband networks, and provides integrated network routeing methods, bandwidth allocation strategies and traffic/routeing control plans for these networks. These architectures extend dynamic routeing control concepts to integrated broadband networks, and suggest perhaps radically different traffic architectures to which broadband networks might evolve. Strategies are examined for dynamic traffic routeing and dynamic trunk capacity routeing, which can adapt to load variations in customer requirements or to network resource failure conditions. Bandwidth allocation procedures are investigated which manage network bandwidth according to a virtual trunk concept, in which dynamic reservation controls are placed on the number of connections for each service category. We analyse the alternative traffic network architectures, for example broadband networks. The examples show that the architectures provide, to varying degrees, the advantages of increased network efficiency, improved customer service and increased network flexibility. Fully shared ring networks which integrate dynamic traffic and trunk capacity routeing yield many of these advantages and also provide greatly simplified network operation along with maximum flexibility to apportion network resources, especially when implemented with asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology. Such a traffic architecture provides a possible direction for future integrated broadband networks.