The evolving view of connection establishment for connection-oriented services in high-speed networks such as ATM involves a contract negotiation process between a user agent and a network agent. The first stage consists of separate roles for the user and the network. The user agent must characterize the information streams that will be transmitted and the performance parameters that define the desired quality of service for that user. Similarly, the network agent must determine the network's resources and its capabilities to accommodate various mixes of service types. The second stage involves negotiations between multiple network and user agents, in which the parties agree to set up connections to transmit the agreed information streams in a manner to guarantee the agreed qualities of service, and at agreed prices. We focus on these two stages that together form the connection establishment process. After this process, during the connection, the network must police the user to determine compliance with the information stream characteristics, and must implement flow control, service priority mechanisms and packet multiplexing disciplines as necessary to guarantee the quality of service.
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