A comparison of the GEVT and RESTART techniques for the simulation of rare events in ATM networks

摘要

This paper contains a performance comparison of two simulation techniques, GEVT and RESTART, in the context of the estimation of rare events in ATM networks. An example of rare event is the occurrence of a cell loss due to buffer overflow in the network switches. The comparison is conducted by estimating the probability of buffer occupancy in four queuing models (M/M/1; M/D/1; Geo/D/1; MMPP/D/1) of ATM switches/multiplexers and comparing the results obtained with those predicted by exact analysis. Both methods allow a reduction of 4 to 5 orders of magnitude in the simulation time with respect to the Monte Carlo method. RESTART has however a broader domain of application and requires a less critical choice of the simulation parameters.