Advanced Testing Techniques for ATM Service Level Agreements Application Note 
Size: 482 KB
Date: August 2000

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Many enterprises rely on public communication networks for their day-to-day business operations. With increasing telecommunications competition and deregulation, enterprise network operators are increasingly demanding Service Level Agreements (SLAs) from their service providers to guarantee the Quality of Service (QoS) of the network services to which they subscribe.

At the same time, service providers are competing by offering differentiated services with different levels of QoS. ATM is still the "layer 2 of choice" for applications that require a guaranteed level of service because ATM can deliver voice, video, and IP traffic with guarantee throughput or delay characteristics. So it is no surprise that service providers are using ATM and ATM traffic contracts to meet Service Level Agreements.

Testing ATM contracts (and therefore testing SLAs) is not as straightforward as it may sound. Service providers must test that their ATM networks are able to meet multiple traffic contracts simultaneously so that they can be confident that multiple SLAs can be honored. At the same time, network equipment manufacturers must be confident that their ATM switches have the functionality, accuracy, and performance to meet the needs of service providers.

This application note discusses advanced techniques for testing Service Level Agreements. Specifically in introduces advances in traffic generation technologies that allow engineers to generate compliant streams of traffic more accurately and realistically than ever before. It then discusses new technologies that allow test engineers to measure QoS and Traffic Policing in real time, the ATM Forum 0.191 test cell, extensions to that test cell, and how that extended cell can be used to test the new Guaranteed Frame Rate (GFR) ATM Service Category specified in TM4.1.