Statistical monitoring of users of ATM networks for charging and network management purposes

The need for reliable monitoring tools for delay sensitive packet networks has become an important issue during recent years. New techniques with the capacity to scan, and to analyse traffic flow in packet networks are oriented to the use of high speed networks as the target architecture for the monitoring algorithms. This is largely due to the transmission rates expected to be available to users. By using statistical processing techniques, it is proposed that it is possible to monitor flow conditions at the individual packet level efficiently. This could be achieved by the use of sampling techniques in order to reduce the amount of data needed for processing, instead of the bulk processing associated with continuous time monitoring