We have shown that whereas buffers at the switches do not increase the utilization of a network when the sources require deterministic service guarantees, they increase the utilization significantly when sources require statistical service guarantees. This result also demonstrates that if a source only desires deterministic bounds on packet delay, then the traffic should be completely smoothed at the source. On the other hand, if statistical bounds on packet delay are acceptable, then traffic should not be smoothed at the source.

Representative Publications:

1. P. Goyal and H.M. Vin, On the Effectiveness of Buffer in Deterministic and Statistical Services, In Proceedings of 8th International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV'98), July 1998 [ Abstract | Paper ]