A batch‐type time‐true ATM‐network simulator—design for parallel processing

Abstract

SUMMARYThis paper presents a new type of network simulator for simulating the call-level operations of telecom networks and especially ATM networks. The simulator is a pure time-true type as opposed to a call-by-call type simulator. It is also characterized as a batch-type simulator. The entire simulation duration is divided into short time intervals of equal duration, t: During t; a batch processing of call origination or termination events is executed and the time-points of these events are sorted. The number of sorting executions is drastically reduced compared to a call-by-call simulator, resulting in considerable timesaving. The proposed data structures of the simulator can be implemented by a general-purpose programming language and are well fitted to parallel processing techniques for implementation on parallel computers, for further savings of execution time. We have first implemented the simulator in a sequential computer and then we have applied parallelization techniques to achieve its implementation on a parallel computer. In order to simplify the parallelization procedure, we dissociate the core simulation from the built-in call-level functions (e.g. bandwidth control or dynamic routing) of the network. The key point for a parallel implementation is to organize data by virtual paths (VPs) and distribute them among processors, which all execute the same set of instructions on this data. The performance of the proposed batch-type, time-true, ATM-network simulator is compared with that of a call-by-call simulator to reveal its superiority in terms of sequential execution time (when both simulators run on conventional computers). Finally, a measure of the accuracy of the simulation results is given.

Traffic savings through a cac procedure incorporating a fair bandwidth allocation policy for elastic services

“…We have built a network simulator for simulating the call-level operations of connection-oriented networks [8]. Regarding the simulation of elastic service-classes, we model them as a concatenation of constant bit rate services, by exploiting the notion of "total offered traffic-load" (the product of: arrival rate x holding time x required bandwidth per call) [9].…”