Meeting Service Quality at a Packet-Switched Access Point

Abstract

Meeting contractual service qualities at a time multiplexed service access point is relatively straightforward: the performance is fully predictable in normal operation and constant once met at the hand-over of the connection to the user. With packet-switched services, the situation is quite different. The technical performance that can be expected depends upon the precautions taken in the resource sharing scheme and the overall bandwidth of the resource. Other issues such as service restoration mechanism play also an important role in the overall expected qualities of the delivered service.