Fast Time-Dependent Evaluation of Integrated Services Networks

We present a numerical-analytical method to evaluate integrated services networks with adaptive routing, scheduling and admission controls. We apply our method to connection-oriented networks supporting different types of real-time connections. The network dynamics is described by difference equations which can be solved for both transient and steady-state performances. Results indicate that our method is computationally much cheaper than discrete-event simulation, and yields accurate performance measures. We compare the performance of different routing schemes on the NSFNET backbone topology with a weighted fair-queueing link scheduling discipline and admission control based on bandwidth reservation. We show that the routing scheme that routes connections on paths which are both under-utilized and short (in number of hops) gives higher network throughput. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-94-28