VC management for heterogeneous QoS multicast transmissions

A crucial component of the interaction between ATM's and the Internet's Quality of Service (QoS) architectures is the efficient mapping of RSVP (Resource reSerVation Protocol) as the Internet's signalling protocol onto the according ATM mechanisms. In particular, this article focuses on one of the most contrary characteristics of RSVP and ATM signalling. This is the support for heterogeneous reservations by RSVP over the ATM subnetwork, taking into account that ATM only allows for a homogeneous QoS within a single Virtual Circuit (VC). We present previous approaches to the solution of this problem and argue for more sophisticated and efficient approaches to manage ATM VCs taking into consideration ATM tariffs and resource consumption.