Use-it-or-lose-it policies for the available bit rate (ABR) service in ATM networks

Computer network switches are tasked to provide the necessary bandwidth to different applications in asynchronous transfer mode networks. These applications are not used continuously such that there are times when the bandwidth allocations are used up and times when they are just left idle. Among the different applications, data applications usually has the lowest priority and receives the left-over bandwidth from other applications. An improved available bit rate framework proposes a use-it-or-lose-it policy based on an open-loop control for allocating bandwidth.