Emulation of Traffic Congestion on ATM Gigabit Networks

Abstract

The deployment of gigabit networks and broadband services has started to support multimedia applications; however, these gigabit networks are rarely saturate since only a few applications are able to stress the network. We consider a future scenario where the use of multimedia applications, such as audio and video teleconferencing in a multi-user environment, is expected to grow rapidly. Therefore, both customers and network providers need to foresee the performance and behavior of the network and applications in this scenario. From the customer’s point of view, it is important to develop procedures to perform traffic measurements and to be able to test the local ATM equipment. In this paper we propose a method for introducing heavy load into an ATM switch and at the User Network Interface (UNI) to study the performance and forecast evolved scenarios. In the experiments we used local equipment (ATM switch and workstations), local network management applications and diagnostics software. The emulated load is generated in a workstation, introduced into the ATM switch and intensified by replicating and re-circulating the cells. The method presented is an easy and affordable way to test performance and an alternative to traffic modeling. Several experiments have been performed and the measurements obtained are presented.