No matter how ingeniously hard disk manufacturers try to increase the capacity of hard disks, ever-more-complicated software fills the space easily. Now networks have the same problem. No matter how quickly bandwidth increases, networks are always slow and users are rarely satisfied. To make matters worse, more and more applications are putting data into the networks that combine text, image, voice, and video. To transmit these multimedia data properly (on time and with no data loss, for example), networks need to provide sufficient bandwidth to meet the ever-increasing quality of service (QoS) requirements. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks provide high data rate, low data loss, and low transfer delay, and can transmit all kinds of data via the same protocol. With these excellent characteristics, ATM is a reliable and attractive technology for broadband multimedia networks.
Therefore, it is important that the performance of ATM networks be thoroughly studied so we can take full advantage of their performance gains. Kesidis provides the necessary foundations for studying ATM network performance. The book covers the transmission of constant bit rate, available bit rate, and variable bit rate traffic. Switching, buffering, and scheduling strategies are detailed with quantitative analysis. A glossary of acronyms is included, as are exercises and solutions for selected exercises. Although a bit difficult, this is definitely a good textbook for graduate students and researchers.
To make the book more self-contained, multimedia networks, ATM network protocols, and ATM switch architectures would have to be introduced. Without some grounding in these subjects, it will be hard for readers to grasp what ATM networks have to do and what the problems are. Another interesting topic that the author omits is IP over ATM. Currently, IP traffic dominates the network. Running connectionless IP traffic with no QoS guarantee over a connection-oriented ATM network and still enjoying the performance guarantee provided by ATM is no easy task. It deserves at least a chapter.
Overall, this is a concise book with great reference value for ATM performance research.
