An ATM network test bench over a C-band satellite system

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is widely used by many organizations to connect to a wide area network (WAN). ATM supports data, video, and voice simultaneously while providing reasonable quality of service (QoS) as well as flexible management of data traffic. This paper describes "ATM Via Satellite", a SingAREN funded project under the Singapore Broadband 21 Scheme. It was an attempt to implement a satellite ATM network in order to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing ATM over satellite links and to study the level of performance at the application level. The system's performance was analyzed under various link conditions and at different levels of forward error correction. The network consists of a 2.048 Mbps bi-directional geostationary satellite link, two 2.4 m satellite dishes, two satellite modems with G.703 data interface cards and Reed-Solomon modules, and one Cisco Catalyst 7500 ATM switch which connect SingAREN to Temasek Engineering School (where the satellite dishes are located) via the Singapore ONE Broadband Network. The tests showed that it was entirely feasible to implement ATM over satellite links. This paper also discusses the issues involved in the design and implementation of a Satellite ATM network.