ATM call control-current issues

This paper briefly describes some of the issues arising from the introduction of `on-demand´ calling into the evolving broadband network. It goes on to describe a demonstrator created at BT Laboratories to help understand and explain some of the processes involved. Call handling includes not only communication with the end-users and other network switches via the appropriate signalling systems, but also the decision-making process an whether and how to accept the call that has been requested. If the call is accepted, the call handling function will also be concerned with the progress of the call itself. The demonstrator is based on a small commercially available ATM cross-connect to which we have added call handling software. This latter resides on an attached workstation which communicates over the switch management interface. Two additional workstations have been fitted with 100 Mb/s TAXI interfaces and serve as user terminals, each connected to the switch