Method and apparatus for distributed control of a multi-class network

• Main Authors: BESHAI, MAGED E, VICKERS, RICHARD
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; French; German
• Published: 07.06.2000
• Edition: 7
• Subjects: ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE; ELECTRICITY; SELECTING; TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHICCOMMUNICATION

A method and apparatus for control of a multi-class digital network (20) are described. The network supports a plurality of digital services using dynamically-configured service bands (36) to support various transport modes and qualities of service. Flexible controls with two degrees of freedom are used at the node level to dynamically configure the service bands. The first degree of freedom is realized using adaptive alternate routing to balance the traffic intensity across the network and, hence, increase the efficiency of the bands. The second degree of freedom is achieved through adaptive network partitioning to provide elasticity to the band structure. This permits band capacity to be adaptively reconfigured as connections are added and dropped. The switching nodes (22) use rate controllers (50) to divide the capacity of each link (24) among the connection classes according to rules which ensure consistent service attributes for each band across the network. The rate controllers are adapted to support different transport modes and different packet sizes so that the deconstruction and reconstruction of packets at network edge devices is eliminated. The advantage is a flexible multi-class network which dynamically reconfigures to service traffic loads as service demands fluctuate.