The authors present a performance study of the Gauss asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switch with respect to cell loss. The Gauss switch is a recently proposed, high-performance, output buffered ATM switch that can easily be implemented. In general, if an ATM switch suffers from cell loss, the exact behavior of this cell loss as a function of parameters such as load, traffic business, internal speed, etc., has to be known. The study focuses on cell loss in the Gauss switch due to its reduced internal speed. Analytical results for the cell loss probability are provided and compared to corresponding quantities for the well-known knockout switch. The comparison shows that the Gauss switch yields significantly smaller cell loss probabilities than the knockout switch.>

Broadband ISDN will use the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) as its basic switching, multiplexing and transmission technique. ATM is very flexible and promising, nevertheless, it requires high-performance switching hardware. The ATM Switching Element (ASE) proposed in this paper, called the Gauss ASE, can meet ATM requirements. Using traffic observations and a number of well known design principles the Gauss ASE gets a number of favorable properties, for example the Gauss ASE is nonblocking and has minimum delay and variance of delay. The ASE is kept modular so that it can easily grow towards a large single stage switching fabric using only two types of Integrated Circuits.