ABSTRACT
Due to the proliferation of personal computers that are connected to the Internet and the popularity of the World Wide Web (WWW), Internet use has gone beyond all expectations. The adoption rate of the Internet has surpassed all other preceding technologies such as telephone, radio, television, and computer. This phenomenal growth has made the Internet protocol (IP) suite the most predominant networking technology. With the rapid growth of Internet services and the recent advances in dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology, an alternative to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) for multiplexing multiple services over individual circuits is needed. The once fast and high-bandwidth ATM switches are not good enough because Internet backbone routers are outperforming them.
