Issues and approaches towards VBR video traffic management in ATM networks

The efficient transportation of real-time variable bit rate (VBR) video traffic in the high-speed networks has been an area of active research. The VBR, video traffic characteristics having heavy tail distribution, high variance and correlation properties are quite complex to be captured by a single traffic model. These characteristics of VBR video (MPEG) traces are further examined. While many methods have been proposed in the literature focusing on various aspects of the VBR video traffic characteristics and their impact on the traffic management, a wider perspective of various issues involved in the efficient transportation of VBR video traffic with high utilization of network resources is imperative. This paper reviews proposed traffic management methods from the literature, summarizes the relevant issues, and proposes an integrated framework addressing those issues. The functionalities of various entities of the integrated framework and future research directions are outlined.