A native ATM protocol architecture design and performance evaluation

ATM networks offer the Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees required for future multimedia applications. Native mode ATM access offers full access to ATM's Quality of Service capabilities in homogeneous ATM networks and provides support for a wide range of information streams with different properties and requirements. The author presents a native ATM service architecture offering a common service access point for establishing virtual connections and additional transport layer functionality such as end-to-end error, flow and congestion control, datagram transfer and VC multiplexing. The author introduces the elements of the architecture, their functionality and capabilities. ATM networks are characterized by sudden changes in the available bandwidth due to the arrival or departure of constant bit rate (CBR) or variable bit rate (VBR) connections, and short term congestion in ATM switches caused by sporadic superimpositions of bursts from several sources. The author focuses on protocol mechanisms aimed at maximising effective end-to-end throughput (goodput) on data channels using ATM's best effort service, the unspecified bit rate (UBR) service.