CONTROLLING THE FLOW OF ATM CELLS IN AN ATM NETWORK

摘要

Method of controlling flow of ATM cells by signalling to the source of cells on a connection to reduce transmission rate when congestion occurs in a switch in an ATM network. The step of signalling being carried out by way of inserting into the Resource Management cells a new Explicit Rate ER value (28) for the connection at a given point in the network. The ER value being obtained is a function of the number of Available Bit Rate (ABR) cells output from the buffer in an interval. The method includes determining the Number of ABR Virtual Containers VCs with more than a predetermined number of cells stored, determining the number of cells on the connection stored, determining the total number of cells currently stored and the remaining capacity of the buffer, and calculating the ER value from a given formula.