Cabletron Systems 6A000 manual Traffic Management, Traffic Descriptors

Switch Administration TrafficManagement

4.6TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT

This section describes how the SmartCell 6A000 manages bandwidth and congestion. It briefly describes console commands that affect how the SmartCell 6A000 manages traffic. This section also provides guidelines for setting some traffic control parameters.

Note For information on troubleshooting traffic congestion problems, see Chapter 5, “Troubleshooting.”

The SmartCell 6A000 has extensive abilities for managing the flow of traffic. Traffic management includes all operations performed by the SmartCell 6A000 that ensure optimum switch throughput, where throughput is based on rate of packet loss, available bandwidth, and traffic processing overhead. Under most conditions, the SmartCell 6A000 can efficiently and automatically manage switch traffic. However, if necessary, you can adjust the switch traffic management parameters. For example, it might be necessary to adjust parameters for a port that carries a large amount of CBR traffic or a very large number of simultaneous connections.

The SmartCell 6A000 provides console commands that affect traffic flow on a global, port, or category of service level. These console commands affect switch traffic flow by controlling

•Bandwidth allocation

•Call Admission Control (CAC) policies

•The service category for a connection

•Buffer memory allocation

•Threshold settings for anti-congestion routines

Caution Do not change traffic control settings unless you have expert-level experience with ATM switching. Back up the switch configuration before making changes. Also, make notes of the changes you make to the traffic control parameters.

4.6.1Traffic Descriptors

Traffic characteristics of an ATM source are signaled through a set of traffic descriptors during connection establishment. The SmartCell 6A000 uses traffic descriptors for resource allocation during call set up and guarantees the Quality of Service (QoS) across the connection. The source traffic descriptor is a set of parameters that describes the expected bandwidth utilization of a connection. You can set these parameters,

•Peak Cell Rate (PCR)

•Sustainable Cell Rate (SCR) and Maximum Burst Size (MBS)

•Minimum Cell Rate (MCR) and Initial Cell Rate (ICR) — signaled through UNI4.0 signaling only

Traffic descriptors vary for each QoS. If a connection is bi-directional, a traffic descriptor has to be assigned to each direction and need not be the same in both directions.

SmartCell 6A000 user data cells are classified according to the state of a cell loss priority (CLP) bit in the header of each cell. A CLP 1 cell has a lower priority than a CLP 0 cell and is discarded first. Source traffic descriptors can specify CLP 0 cell traffic, CLP 1 cell traffic, or the aggregate CLP 0+1 traffic.

SmartCell 6A000 User Guide 4-17