Virtual spacing for flexible traffic control

Weighted fair queuing emerges as an elegant and effective solution to the problem of integrating real time services with strict delay constraints and high‐speed data services for which significant delays cannot always be avoided. Virtual spacing is a weighted fair queuing scheduling algorithm intended to be applied in the context of the ATM based BISDN. After discussing how virtual spacing allows flexible traffic control for a variety of service types, we discuss the issue of its implementation in switching nodes. The aim of the paper is to highlight the advantages of weighted fair queuing in enabling a truly integrated services network and to propose a technologically feasible implementation.