Abstract
In this article, we describe a new architecture providing the access control service in both ATM and IP-over-ATM networks. This architecture is based on agents distributed in network equipment. It is well known that distribution makes the management process more difficult. This issue is raised and we provide an algorithm to distribute the access control policy on our agents. The comparison with other approaches shows that this architecture provides big improvements in ATM-level access control, scalability and QoS preservation.