Performance over ATM Constant Bit Rate

The TEN-34 network delivers today stable highspeed networking services to the European R&D community. At the same time research into more advanced backbone technologies is being carried out with the goal of making more sophisticated services such as bandwidth on demand available on the TEN-34 network. This paper describes the first phase of the experiments on advanced backbone technologies. A set of 10 experiments was defined and carried out for this purpose by the TERENA Task Force TEN. These experiments deal mostly with aspects of ATM, such as signalling, but also with new IP related technologies such as RSVP. The results were partly reassuring, and partly quite disappointing. Overall these experiments have shown that more time is needed to bring the advanced features of ATM to a mature state. This paper contains after a short introduction into the goals of the project the results of each of the experiments, presented by the leader(s) of the respective experiment in the TF-TEN. In a summary an attempt is made to assert the current status of backbone technology with regard to new services.