AbstractIn this paper, we present an approximation for the probability of cell loss of heterogeneous bursty traffic in broadband integrated packet networks based on the asynchronous transfer mode. The sources considered here alternate between active and silent periods and are characterized by their peak and average transmission rates. The cell loss probability is obtained by considering only the number of active sources at a given time and computing the amount of traffic that exceeds the link capacity. Since the amount of buffered excess traffic is not considered in this computation, this approximation is actually an upper bound of the cell loss probability. The numerical efficiency of this bound enables it to be used as a measure based on which robust and simple resource allocation strategies can be developed for bursty sources. Comparison of this bound with the simulation results has shown that the bound is close to the actual loss probabilities especially for large burst lengths and high utilizations.