ATM Based Broadband Access System Using Bearer Connection Control

SUMMARY This paper discusses an ATM based access system for a broadband access network that provides flexible and cost effective multimedia services for mass consumption including households. The access system proposed herein uses ATM-PDS subscriber transmission technologies, thus enabling multiple users to share a single fiber resource while transmitting or receiving multimedia information within the broadband network. The system also has virtual channel concentration function by using the bearer connection control protocol being studied for V_B5.2 interface in the ITU-T. We show that the virtual channel concentration function reduces the access cost per user. We also discuss multiple QoS control methods in the system to provide multiple services efficiently. This paper evaluates two methods to handle ABR class and UBR class traffic: shared bandwidth with preferred ABR method, and guaranteed bandwidth with overriding method. The result indicates that when using the shared bandwidth with preferred ABR method for the access system, ABR throughput and UBR throughput per VC depend on the proportion of the number of ABR-VC connections to the total active VCs and on the each buffer size in the access system. And it is difficult to control ABR-VC and UBR-VC throughputs in the access network by using the shared bandwidth with preferred ABR method, which simple mechanism. With the guaranteed bandwidth with overriding method, while ABR-VC throughput and UBR-VC throughput also depend on the proportion of ABR-VCs to the total VCs and on the buffer size, it can offer the minimum guaranteed throughput to the UBR traffic. The result shows the method is effective for easy service provisioning.