The exponential growth of multimedia applications demands high-speed, broadband global information infrastructure. The Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a preferred transmission and switching technique for B-ISDN. ATM has played a major role in current terrestrial B-ISDN infrastructure. A satellite ATM network has been envisioned as the next information super-skyway, and has been included in the global information infrastructure. In Satellite ATM (SATM) networks, the various traffic patterns and dynamically changing topology call for effective network traffic control mechanisms to reduce congestion and utilize network resource efficiently. On network level, Virtual Path (VP) distribution is a critical issue in ATM traffic control domain. In this thesis, three schemes have been proposed: Firstly, a new Discrete Time Dynamic Virtual Path Allocation (DTDVPA) is proposed with consideration of periodically time varying topology for Inter-satellite Link (ISL) based SATM networks. The DTDVPA allows the setting up off-line of a time-dependent virtual topology for online dynamic virtual path selection. Secondly, an improved network flow model, Virtual Path Flow Assignment (VPFA) model, is proposed with non-linear objective function to solve the VP optimization problem in ATM networks. The VPFA model extends the network modeling concepts from link-node incidence to path-node incidence. Finally, considering the stochastic nature of ATM traffic demands, sample values of traffic demands is used to estimate the values of virtual path capacity instead of using mean value. The Weighted Scenario Tracking (WST) approach is used here to solve this Stochastic Programming (SP) problem.