Performance Evaluation of a Distributed Approach for VPC Network Management

By reserving transmission capacity on a series of links from one node to another, making a virtual path connection (VPC) between these nodes, several benefits are made. VPCs will enable segregation of traffics with different QoS, simplify routing at transit nodes, and simplify connection admission control. As telecommunications traffics experience variations in the number of calls per time unit, due to office hours, inaccurate forecasting, quick changes in traffic loads, and changes in the types of traffic (as in introduction of new services), there is a need to cope for this by adaptive capacity reallocation. By using VPC capacity reallocation, the responsivness for traffic fluctuations will increase. The focus of this paper is to propose and evaluate a distributed approach for VPC management with multiple routes. The evaluation is done in networks with one type of traffic and having Poissonian call arrivals. The size of the network is moderate and can be seen as a core ATM network