Traffic Control in ATM Networks

Editor's Note: Zbynek Bazanowski is a doctoralcandidate specializing in managing high-speed networks.I met him in St. Petersburg where he gave an excellenttalk on managing ATM networks and he has done important work in understanding the dynamicbehavior of ATM networks under load. I worry that thecontrol mechanisms for high-speed networks mustanticipate bottlenecks, and relying on feedback control will lead to servo lags that will make thesenetworks inherently unstable when they regularly exceed40% utilization. This is real and not a theoreticalproblem demonstrated by the September, 1995 INTERNETtraffic jams. Here is Zbynek's prognosis on managingthese high-speed networks.