Broadband performance: a services view

The authors present an analysis of several aspects of the physical and asynchronous-transfer-mode layer performance needed to support representative broadband services. The functional network architecture evaluated is based on current standards activity regarding the SONET/ATM-based broadband integrated services digital network. The analysis of five example services indicates that the limiting performance of the end-to-end transport network may require cell loss rates, due to congestion, better than 10^-7 for bursty data services and better than 10^-9 for continuous bit-stream-oriented services. The limiting end-to-end error performance may need a better than 10^-9 bit error rate to support all of these services. Performance objectives for individual network elements will be necessarily more stringent than the end-to-end numbers