The Impact of Cell Dropping Policies in Atm Nodes

We consider policies for deciding which cells will be lost or dropped when losses occur at a nite buuer ATM node. The performance criteria of interest are the delay of transmitted (non-lost) cells, the jitter (or variability in the delay of transmitted cells), and the burstiness of lost cells. We analyze the performance tradeoos for various cell dropping policies. We show the usual the rear droppingg in which cells that arrive to a full buuer are lost sto-chastically maximizes delay, while front dropping,, in which cells at the front of the buuer are lost, stochastically minimizes delay. On the other hand, rear dropping stochastically minimizes the jitter. We also propose policies that have both stochastically smaller delay and less lost cell burstiness in a stochastic majorization sense than the rear dropping policy.