Analysis of traffic measurements on a wide area ATM network

There is a pressing need for asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) traffic measurements to validate/verify a large number of simulation and analytical studies of ATM networks. The results from a measurement study of traffic on a wide area ATM network, the very High Speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) network are reported. We illustrate how the traffic characteristics change as the traffic traverses the network and the statistical behavior of wide area ATM traffic. Also, we comment on the validity of a few theoretical assumptions made by other research, offering empirical evidence to support these comments.