Measurement of ATM frame latency

Frame latency, as one of the main QoS parameters, quantifies also the level of quality of network devices. We proposed a new metric for ATM frame latency called MIMO (message-in message-out) latency that improves upon other latency metrics commonly used for continuous frame technologies. Analysis of examples and measurement results showed that MIMO is less workload dependent and a better indicator of switch performance. MIMO can be used to measure the frame latency of a single switch or of a network of switches. We showed that the formulation of MIMO aggregation is very useful in understanding the contribution of each network element and their interconnections to the total frame latency.