The effective bandwidth of stable distributions

In this paper the effective bandwidths of stable distributions are studied. Effective bandwidths are being heavily promoted as the most appropriate method for call admission control (CAC) and resource allocation within ATM networks. Recent work in teletraffic modelling has suggested that models based on stable distributionsprovide an efficient mechanism for capturing the long range dependence and infinite variance associated with teletraffic data (the Joseph and Noah effects; see [1]). This has potentially serious implications for effective bandwidths and we show how the effective bandwidth of such data is theoretically infinite. We then present two approximate methods for estimating the effective bandwidth of data based on stable distribution.