Performance benchmarking of signaling in ATM networks

The overhead associated with establishing switched virtual circuits (SVCs) in high-speed wide area ATM networks is an important performance factor in applications with client/server architectures, including the World Wide Web and low-latency applications such as command/control and modeling/simulation. This article quantifies this overhead by describing a benchmarking framework implemented in a reliable, portable, and easily expandable toolset designed to conduct measurements of well-defined parameters and performance metrics on equipment that is either isolated or connected to a live network. The usefulness of this toolset is then demonstrated in a test suite applied to assess call rates and connection establishment latency of point-to-point and point-to-multipoint ATM connections in the MAGIC, ATDnet, and AAI WANs, on the campus ATM LAN at NRL, and on individual switches in our laboratories