ATM VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK DESIGN ALTERNATIVES

An ATM virtual private network (AVPN) offers to a multisite customer a n ATM transport service based on a 'virtual' topology of dedicated VPs embedded in a larger ATM backbone. The goal of AVPN is to allow the e fficient and flexible use of the resources by giving to the customer c onsiderable autonomy in managing such resources. In this paper, we sho w how this goal can be achieved by exploiting standard ATM features. W e also show that a critical issue in AVPN design is congestion control within an AVPN and prevention of interference across different AVPNs. We propose various design alternatives for AVPNs, evaluate their perf ormance and compare their congestion control and dynamic bandwidth all ocation features.