IP Switching Over ATM Networks

Abstract

The enormous growth in the Internet is presenting a major challenge to today’s Internet Service Providers. It is critical for an ISP to keep pace with the latest technologies and network architectures to insure its ability to deliver the required quality of service at a reasonable price while remaining a profitable commercial venture. Although IP is the most commonly used networking protocol, the increase of the switching capacity of routers cannot meet the explosion of Internet traffic. On the other hand, ATM promises both high transmission speed and QoS guarantees. IP switching is a set of protocols which can be used to combine the flexibility of IP software with the speed of ATM hardware. It is a cost-effective solution which can tackle the problems of IP congestion and poor QoS for multimedia applications.