ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORT ARCHITECTURES FOR CORE ATM NETWORKS

In order to remain competitive in an increasingly aggressive market-pl ace, it is essential that network operators deliver cost effective, re silient bulk transport. This will enable the unit costs of circuit del ivery in the core network to be reduced while assuring high-level qual ity of service. In particular, the growth in advanced data services wh ich exploit ATM technology will place significant demands on the core transmission layer of telecommunications networks. This paper investig ates alternative transport architectures for core ATM networks.