Buffer sizing for high speed video information retrieval on ATM networks

Residential multimedia service provisioning is the challenge of future generation high-speed networks. Despite the large bandwidth availability, direct circuit switched connections from customers to remote servers may be critical in terms of network performance. Substantial advantages can be achieved when buffers, placed at the local switching nodes, are in charge of decoupling the retrieval rate on the long distance network from the delivery speed of video information on the local loop. In previous contributions, performance bounds have been obtained in the assumption of very large buffering capability. This paper evaluates the effect of limited buffer size on the blocking probability of video retrieval requests, and shows that optimal performance is achieved with a relatively limited storage capability.