The requirements for the characteristics of the ATM measuring equipment (AME) described in this Recommendation must be adhered to in order to ensure that the following objectives are met: Compatibility between test equipment produced by different manufacturers: any generation of ATM cells by the AME should be equivalent given the same control settings on different test equipment. Any analysis of ATM cell performance by the AME should provide the same results as different test equipment when provided with the same cell stream(s). Compatibility between test equipment and network equipment: any in-service measurement by the AME of network performance parameters and defects defined in Recommendations 1.356 and 1.610 should provide the same results as ne?work equipment monitoring when provided with the same cell stream(s). Compatibility between out-of-service and in-service measurements: any out-of-service analysis by the AME of performance parameters and defects defined in Recommendations 1.356 and 1.610 should provide higher quality results (in terms of accuracy and robustness) than in-service monitoring when applied to the equivalent network connection(s).