Dynamic bandwidth allocation is a technique by which traffic bandwidth in a shared telecommunications medium can be allocated on demand and fairly between different users of that bandwidth. This is a form of bandwidth management

Bandwidth management

Bandwidth management is the process of measuring and controlling the communications on a network link, to avoid filling the link to capacity or overfilling the link, which would result in network congestion and poor performance of the network.- Management :Bandwidth management mechanisms may be...

, and is essentially the same thing as statistical multiplexing

Statistical multiplexing

Statistical multiplexing is a type of communication link sharing, very similar to dynamic bandwidth allocation . In statistical multiplexing, a communication channel is divided into an arbitrary number of variable bit-rate digital channels or data streams. The link sharing is adapted to the...

. Where the sharing of a link adapts in some way to the instantaneous traffic demands of the nodes connected to the link.

Dynamic bandwidth allocation takes advantage of several attributes of shared networks:
(1) all users are typically not connected to the network at one time
(2) even when connected, users are not transmitting data (or voice or video) at all times
(3) most traffic is "bursty" -- there are gaps between packets of information that can be filled with other user traffic

Different network protocols implement dynamic bandwidth allocation in different ways. These methods are typically defined in standard

Standardization

Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....

s developed by standards bodies such as the ITU

Itu

Itu is an old and historic municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. The population in 2009 was 157,384 and the area is 641.68 km². The elevation is 583 m. This place name comes from the Tupi language, meaning big waterfall. Itu is linked with the highway numbered the SP-75 and are flowed...

, IEEE, FSAN, or IETF. One example is defined in the ITU G.983 specification for passive optical network

Passive optical network

A passive optical network is a point-to-multipoint, fiber to the premises network architecture in which unpowered optical splitters are used to enable a single optical fiber to serve multiple premises, typically 16-128. A PON consists of an optical line terminal at the service provider's central...

 (PON).

See also

• Statistical multiplexing
  Statistical multiplexing
  Statistical multiplexing is a type of communication link sharing, very similar to dynamic bandwidth allocation . In statistical multiplexing, a communication channel is divided into an arbitrary number of variable bit-rate digital channels or data streams. The link sharing is adapted to the...
  
  
• Channel access method
  Channel access method
  In telecommunications and computer networks, a channel access method or multiple access method allows several terminals connected to the same multi-point transmission medium to transmit over it and to share its capacity...
  
  
• Time division duplex (TDD)
• Bandwidth Controller
• Dynamic TDMA
• Reservation ALOHA
  Reservation ALOHA
  Reservation ALOHA, or R-ALOHA, is a channel access method for wireless transmission that allows uncoordinated users to share a common transmission resource. Reservation ALOHA is a schema or rule set for the division of transmission resources over fixed time increments, also known as slots...
  
   (R-ALOHA)
• Packet reservation multiple access (PRMA)
• OFDMA
  OFDMA
  Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access is a multi-user version of the popular Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing digital modulation scheme. Multiple access is achieved in OFDMA by assigning subsets of subcarriers to individual users as shown in the illustration below...
  
  
• CDMA
• Dynamic channel allocation
• Interleaved polling with adaptive cycle time
  Interleaved polling with adaptive cycle time
  Interleaved Polling with Adaptive Cycle Time is an algorithm designed by Glen Kramer, Biswanath Mukherjee and Gerry PesaventoAdvanced Technology Lab.at the University of California, Davis...
  
   (IPACT)
• Bandwidth guaranteed polling
  Bandwidth guaranteed polling
  Bandwidth Guaranteed Polling is a dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithm designed by Maode Ma et al. at the National University of Singapore. This is an instance of an algorithm that allocates bandwidth based on fixed weights....
  
   (BGP)
• Fair Queuing with Service Envelopes (FQSE)
• Limited Allocation with Excess Redistribution (LAER+EA)
• Hybrid granting
• Modified Token-bucket