Interconnection of Broadband Islands via Satellite - Experiments on the Race Ii Catalyst Project

This paper presents the performance studies of ATM via satellite based on experiments implemented by the RACE II CATALYST project R2074. The purpose of the project was to develop an ATM satellite link for the future B-ISDN services, particularly for the interconnections of the ATM testbeds which are in the form of broadband islands. Then initial ATM based B-ISDN can be introduced by interconnections of these broadband islands. The CATALYST project has developed the equipment to be able to interconnect newly developed ATM testbeds as well as the existing networks such as DQDB, FDDI and Ethernet. Experiments carried out, demonstrated the capability of the satellite ATM connections to support data, voice, video and multimedia applications. These experiments provided a real system demonstration of ATM via satellite. In the light of the experiment, this paper evaluates the performance model and the capacity of the ATM satellite equipment, and studies the relevant issues and the impact of ATM-via-satellite on the applications and the protocols.