A techno-economic analysis of selected ATM charging schemes for aggregate LAN interconnect

Corporate network managers are beginning to realise the potential of ATM in terms of flexibility and quality of service offered. One of the consequences of this new flexibility is that corporate network managers will have to consider the ATM service categories and the type of service that can be delivered by transferring data across them. In addition a network manager will have to consider the cost of ATM and its constituent service categories. Thus, in addition to considering the cost of using ATM relative to substitute technologies, network manager will also have to consider the costs of sending data over the different service categories within ATM, subject to a given quality of service. This is one of the issues investigated by the authors along with further economic aspects of ATM, focusing on on a single service, LAN interconnect, in particular. We examine some techno-economic aspects of LAN interconnect over ATM by applying selected charging schemes proposed by the CANCAN2 consortium. (A number of European network operators are using charging schemes for ATM based on CANCAN proposals). The charging schemes are applied to some typical traffic scenarios which are based on traffic generated from the OISIN 3 LAN trail carried out at Lund University, Sweden. This provides the basis for the data traffic patterns analysed