2 SIMULATION TOOLS FOR TESTING ATM RESOURCE-ALLOCATION STRATEGIES

Two event-driven simulation tools aimed at testing access control and routing mechanisms in an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) environment are presented. The first one is dedicated to the behavioural descripti on of an ATM Virtual Circuit (VC) switch. The purpose is to test resou rce allocation and call Admission Control (CAC) strategies, so only th e relevant events for this objective are considered and some important functions (e.g., the switching element) for a complete description of an ATM switch are not explicitly modeled. The second simulator has be en designed to test routing strategies for an ATM network. In such a c ase, a higher level of abstraction than in the previous one is necessa ry and, again, only the meaningful events to the aim are taken into ac count. Some resource allocation, CAC, and routing schemes are also rep orted, along with the description of the simulation tools. Several sim ulation results are discussed, in order to assess their performance.