The output of a switch, or, effective bandwidths for networks
Abstract.
Consider a switch which queues traffic from many independent input
flows. We show that in the large deviations limiting regime in
which the number of inputs increases and the service rate and buffer
size are increased in proportion, the statistical characteristics of a
flow are essentially unchanged by passage through the switch. This
significantly simplifies the analysis of networks of switches. It
means that each traffic flow in a network can be assigned an effective
bandwidth, independent of the other flows, and the behaviour of any
switch in the network depends only on the effective
bandwidths of the flows using it.