Multimedia-multiparty service support in ATM wide area networks

Multicast service support in today's networks will be crucial for the evolution of new computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) applications. In order to consolidate ATM as the future wide area network technology it is required that it provides an efficient support for this service. We describe a new proposal of a network structure based on WAN-ATM that provides an efficient workgroup communication and which has been tested in real environments. We focus on the network structure, functional switching and the resource allocation issues.