A Methodology for Virtual Path and Virtual Network Bandwidth Assignment in Broadband Networks with QOS Guarantees

We introduce a methodology for establishing a connection between two arbitrary nodes of a multiclass broadband network that secures suucient resources at every intermediate node along the selected route, and thereby guarantees quality of service (QOS). We describe how a Virtual Path (VP) mechanism may be implemented within our framework, and compare the performance achieved by such a scheme with that of a Virtual Circuit (VC) approach. The notion of contract region is introduced as a mean of achieving coordination among distributed Virtual Path controllers to ensure that the state of each network link remains within its schedulable region and the cell level QOS is guaranteed.