A method for controlling the flow of cells in an ATM network

摘要

An ATM network is disclosed in which a shaping operation is performed to equalize cell flows by generating the arrival time of an ATM cell on the basis of the arrival intervals of input ATM cells, and adding an optimum delay to the arrival time, thereby obtaining an ideal transmission time t 0 . A flag is prepared to indicate whether the value of a timer counter for generating the arrival time of an ATM cell on the basis of the arrival time intervals of input ATM cells has exceeded a maximum timer cycle value. The shaping operation is performed by managing the arrival time of the ATM cell with reference to a relative time in accordance with the state of the flag.