Method of controlling the peak cell rate spacing of multiplexed ATM traffic

A method of peak cell rate spacing for use with an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) communication system, comprising:

• (a) examining whether a cell has arrived for each of a plurality of time slots;
• (b) if step (a) determines that a cell has not arrived, linking a cell which is linked to a present cell time slot location of an event scheduler, to an output list;
• (c) if step (a) determines that a cell has arrived and if the cell is judged to be the first cell, changing an assumed location of that cell to the present time slot;
• (d) if a cell is judged not to be the first cell, deciding whether the number of arrived cells is the same as the number of departed cells;
• (e) if the number of arrived cells is not the same as the number of departed cells in step (d), increasing an arrived cell counter by one and linking the node to a temporary queue;
• (f) if the number of arrived cells is the same as the number of departed cells in step (d), determining an assumed location, comparing the assumed location with the present time slot, and changing the assumed location to the present time slot if the assumed location is earlier than the present time slot;
• (g) after either step (c) or (f) is performed, increasing the arrived cell counter by one and linking the node to the assumed location of the event scheduler;
• (h) if there are nodes linked to the present time slot of the event scheduler after performing at least one of step (b), step (e) or step (g), linking all linked cells into the end of the output list;
• (i) if there is a cell in the output list after performing step (h), increasing a counter indicating the number of departed cells, changing a variable representing the most recent cell departure time to the present time slot, outputting the cells, and comparing the number of arrived cells with the number of departed cells;
• (j) if the number of arrived cells and the number of departed cells are the same in step (i), linking the node into a free list;
• and
• (k) if the number of arrived cells is not the same as the number of departed cells in step (i), determining an assumed location, linking the node, which is linked to a temporary queue header, to the assumed location of the event scheduler, and linking the node into the free list.