Method and structure for prioritizing performance monitoring cells in an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) system

摘要

A method (FIGS. 5-6) and a structure (FIGS. 3-4) are taught herein for prioritizing and transmitting forward monitoring cells (FMCs) for performance monitoring in an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) system. An ATM system may have multiple physical lines which have many virtual paths which have multiple virtual connections. These paths/connections may be performance monitored by transmitting an FMC each time N ATM data cells are received for the connection/path (wherein N is number which may be different for each connection/path). The number of data cells are stored via a counter for each connection/path being monitored. Once N ATM cells are received on a given connection/path, an FMC descriptor is queued which indicates that the FMC cell for the given connection/path must be transmitted before receipt of N/2 subsequent cells received by the given connection/path. A priority (which is a function of one of the counters) is used to ensure that the N/2 requirement is satisfied.