Lightweight signaling in ATM networks for high quality transfer of Internet traffic

To keep up with the rapid development of Internet services and in the face of increasing needs for quality of service (QoS) and bandwidth guarantees, we consider an accelerated signaling capability for the ATM network in order to offer QoS to Internet applications. Focusing on those applications relying on the transmission control protocol (TCP), we propose to emphasise the connection oriented characteristics of TCP by associating an ATM virtual channel (VC) connection with each TCP connection requesting QoS. Specifically we study a synchronisation method between the connection establishment procedure at the TCP level and the signaling procedure within the ATM network. The latter is described as lightweight because it relies on the exchange of single-cell messages consisting of resource management (RM) cells. Finally, we examine how this proposal could be integrated into the multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) approach developed by the IETF. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.