Importance

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Abstract

A wide variety of call traffic is effectively integrated in a single broadband communications network. Calls having widely differing bandwidth requirements and sensitivities to delay are handled by the network with efficient, effective, and fair bandwidth allocation and transmission scheduling. This is accomplished by classifying each call in accordance with certain signal characteristics, such as required bandwidth and sensitivity to delay. Each call class is directed to a separate queuing circuit. Some calls in certain classes, such as those associated with high-bandwidth constant bit rate services, are each directed to their own individual queuing circuits. Other calls within a class are statistically multiplexed into a single queuing circuit for that class. A multiplexing circuit operates in accordance with a dynamic time slice scheme which involves defining a service cycle time period during which the multiplexer withdraws a predetermined number of information packets from each of a plurality of queuing circuits containing information packets and places those predetermined numbers of packets onto an output link. The multiplexer breaks up the cycle time period into a plurality of time slices, each of which determines how many information packets are transmitted from each queuing circuit during the cycle time period. Efficient resource usage and congestion avoidance are further achieved by using one of a number of alternative scheduling techniques for delay insensitive traffic.

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First Claim