Allocation of bandwidth in a dual-bus MANs interconnected environment

Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) can be interconneeted to form wider, composite networks. Such a network can preserve the characteristics of the underlying MANs, including the capability to support integrated services (e.g. video, voice and data). Conventional packet switching techniques [ISO 8648], because of their high overhead for error recovery and flow control, cannot be used without loosing this capability. We propose a simple bandwidth management algorithm that allows the management of traffic with real-time requirements with very low overhead. The switching nodes that interconnect the MANs have no knowledge of individual connections in progress, but monitor the total bandwidth occupation by real-time traffic and block new connections that would exceed the total bandwidht allocated for such traffic. The protocols for bandwidth management are performed, on behalf of the end user equipment, by the gateways that interface the users to the interconnected MANs and by the switching nodes. We discuss the feasibility of the overall interconnection architecture and estimate the main performance figures.