
23 ms under overload. In light to heavy loading
conditions the latency was 8 ms.
We also observed that changing the number of
outbound sessions had little or no impact on the latency if
the appropriate synchronous bandwidth was allocated.
8.2.6: Synchronous bandwidth allocation
It was observed that incorrect bandwidth allocation
could dramatically affect the performance. Allocating the
appropriate bandwidth resulted in a guaranteed low-
latency channel for the application.
8.3: Synchronous only network
We simulated a synchronous only network with 70
voice/video stations and a ring latency of 122 ms (figure
19). In this configuration, the only traffic on the network
was voice/video. Each station was generating voice and
video traffic at a combined rate of 1.5 Mbps. Each station
was allocated 0.37 ms per token rotation leading to a
TTRT of 26 ms. The total load was near the maximum
sustainable by the network.
The results showed that the 99% latencies were less
than 7 milliseconds. In fact, even though the TTRT was
26 ms ( in order to accommodate 70 stations), the actual
maximum delay suffered by any packet was of the order
of 10 milliseconds.
It was also observed that there was a sharp drop in
performance with a small increase in the number of
stations. This is because the network is operating at
maximum capacity and even a slight increase in load can
cause the synchronous bandwidth to be over allocated.
We concluded that it is possible to calculate the maximum
number of synchronous stations that can be supported and
provide acceptable latencies. For the given application
(1.5 Mbps MPEG stream), it is between 55-65 stations,
depending on the safety factor desired.
It is not advisable to apply bursty and asynchronous
traffic to the synchronous channel as it can lead to
extremely high delays [34], [35]. This is because a burst
offers instantaneous load which can exceed the allocated
bandwidth causing the queuing component of the delay to
increase significantly .
9: Conclusion
The FDDI asynchronous mode provides excellent
multimedia services at normal loads. However, it has
limitations under heavy and extremely bursty loads which
may not be acceptable for voice/video services. The FDDI
synchronous mode of transmission provides a near
constant, low latency service under various loads and
configurations. Our results demonstrate that a large
number of simultaneous MPEG and Px64 sessions can be
supported even when the network is in over-load . Audio,
video, imaging and data communications services can be
integrated over FDDI without compromising any service
requirement in all but the most extreme cases. These
results demonstrate the feasibility of FDDI as an
integrated network and are part of a continuing study on
multimedia over FDDI.
10: Acknowledgments
Our acknowledgments to Bob Grow (XDI), J. D. Russell
(IBM), Bob O'Hara, Basil Alwan and Dave Roberts
(Advanced Micro Devices) for their invaluable help and
suggestions in the model development.