Management architectures as well as protocols for accessing managed entities and exchanging management information are well developed in standards. On the other hand developments in open distributed processing (ODP) are of recognized importance for network and service management. Their generic features fit well into the geographically extended, multiple vendor and heterogeneous environment of communication networks. As a third ongoing development asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) broadband integrated services digital networks (B-ISDN) offer challenging problems for resource allocation, network performance and quality of service (QoS) evaluation in real time. The paper shows how performance monitoring and evaluation for ATM networks can greatly profit from the features of a distributed system environment (DSE). The extreme flexibility offered by the ATM principle requires a rich and reusable set of servers accomplishing coordinated performance evaluation tests. DSE transparencies are an excellent match to corresponding management applications (MA) requirements, so that tests can be performed in a distributed, flexible and adaptable way under a conceptually simple architecture. The paper draws extensively from a non-distributed counterpart, i.e. an existing sophisticated ATM test and analysis tool developed under the "Research for Advanced Communications in Europe" (RACE) program, R1083 PARASOL project.>