Tra c Characterization and Switch Utilization using a DeterministicBounding

Compressed digital video is one of the most important types of traac in future integrated services networks. It is dif-cult to support this class of traac since, on one hand, compressed video is bursty, while on the other hand, it requires performance guarantees from the network. The common belief is that we are unlikely to achieve a high network utilization while providing performance guarantees to such bursty sources. In this paper, we introduce a new De-terministic Bounding Interval-Dependent (D-BIND) traf-c model, together with tight analysis techniques, to explore the possibility of providing deterministic performance guarantees to VBR traac while still achieving a reasonable network utilization. The D-BIND model consists of a family of rate-interval pairs where the rate is a bounding rate over the interval length. The model captures the intuitive property that over longer interval lengths, a source may be bounded by a rate lower than its peak rate and closer to its long-term average rate. While the D-BIND model is a general deterministic model that can be used to characterize a wide variety of sources, in this study, we focus on MPEG-compressed video. Using two 10 minute traces, we demonstrate the eeectiveness of the new model and show that, contrary to common belief, reasonable network utilization can be achieved for compressed video, even when deterministic guarantees are provided.