Performance evaluation of broadband connections and services under varying traffic loads

The authors present ongoing work in the RACE R1056 project which is related to the integration and verification part of the RACE programme. The project goal is to establish a basic business integrated broadband communications demonstrator in an evolutionary hybrid network environment. The demonstrator configuration consists of a switching node, a customer access network and a customer premises network; its physical implementation is described. Some key business services which are to be demonstrated together with the supporting user terminals are presented. Test objectives cover verification of the hardware performance, interface compatibility and verification of a new transfer mode technique: ATM (asynchronous transfer mode). Verification activity covers the network performance (verification of end-to-end connections and measurements of key parameters). Evaluation activities cover network performance and its relationship to the quality of service perceived by a user