We consider large buffer asymptotics for feed-forward networks of discrete-time queues with deterministic service rate shared by multiple classes of streams subject to work conserving service policies. First we review the concept of effective bandwidths for traffic streams sharing a common buffer subject to subject to tail constraints on the workload distribution. Next, we obtain the effective bandwidth of the departure process from such a queue, proving that in fact the effective bandwidth of the output is at worst equal to that of the input, and depending on the service rate, strictly less than that of the input. We then define the notion of a decoupling bandwidth and the associated constraints, guaranteeing that asymptotics within the network are decoupled. These results provide a framework for call admission schemes which are sensitive to constraints on the tail distribution of the workload or approximate cell loss probabilities. Our results require relatively weak assumptions on both the traffic streams and service policies. We consider the problem of “optimal ” traffic shaping (via buffering) subject to a loss constraint. Finally, we discuss our results in the context of resource management for ATM networks. 1

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