Traffic control at terminal equipment in ATM networks using cryptographic techniques

The usage parameter control (UPC) function, which monitors and controls user traffic to protect network resources from both malicious and unintentional misbehaviour, is an important task for ATM networks in performing congestion control procedures. The scheme performing the UPC function is usually called a 'control scheme' or 'policing scheme'. No matter what scheme is employed, the cell delay variation (CDV) that comes before the scheme makes it difficult to police user traffic accurately as long as it is located at the edge node of the public network^1-10. In this paper, we propose an architecture where the network can perform the UPC function at a user's terminal equipment, in order to overcome the CDV problem. With this feature, the network can control user traffic more accurately. Applying cryptographic techniques, we also propose a signalling protocol to support this architecture.