TCP/IP, ATM and IP Cell Switching

The ITU-T and the ATM Forum are defining new ATM bearer capabilities and associated traffic control mechanisms. These bearer capabilities will be used by service providers for the design of telecommunication services based on the ATM technology. In the same time Internet is changing to take care of multimedia applications using new protocols with reservation schemes. Another way is to implement IP over ATM (IP-switching, Tag-switching, Fast-IP). This paper shows that the Internet and ATM networks are complementary in the short and medium term and solution as IP-switching are meaningful. However, in the long term new solutions as IP cell switching or adaptive networks should be available. A performance evaluation is proposed to compare the main solutions.