The DCAN (Devolved Control ATM Networks) project aims to design and develop the necessary infrastructure for scalable control and management of multi-service Networks.
As we can see, an ATM network has a lot of functionalities and therefore the ATM switches has a lot of tasks to accomplish. It means that the control in switches is quite complex, and the DCAN project is all about devolving this control to workstations in order to make the switches simpler and more efficient.
To manage to do this, we must use an open ATM switch interface, the Ariel Interface [#!Ariel!#].