ATM network testing and measurement

This contribution addresses some very general problems of testing and measuring in ATM networks. The paper outlines important aspects of the basic types of test such as conformance, functionality and performance. Furthermore, it highlights the several aspects and problems of tests at the level of an interface, a switch and a whole network. As ATM traffic has almost no structure, it is impossible to make rules for testing and measurement from traffic modeling. We demonstrate the limitations of the standardized performance parameters, which are generally used as estimators. This e.g. shows that it is possible to obtain with the same estimator completely different cell loss ratios for the same traffic flow.