ATM signalling overview and performance measurements in a local area ATM network

The time-overhead introduced with the performance of ATM end-to-end signalling operations is an important performance factor that determines the service quality. A significant time-overhead associated with the high rate establishment and release of many short-lived data channels, required in various multimedia applications, would result in network performance degradation. This paper presents traffic experiments conducted in a local area ATM network for the timing evaluation of end-to-end signalling operations. Timing results that quantify the introduced delays under diverse conditions of signalling load and traversed nodes are provided. Unexpected results and factors that may intensely affect the signalling performance are presented