Our work deals with ATM satellite communications networks employing DAMA, whose algorithm must be efficient and robust. Its efficiency ensures a fast response to a connection's demand for bandwidth. Its robustness ensures satisfaction of the connection's required QoS and its integrity under unpredictable traffic burstiness. Computational practicality dictates that only heuristic DAMA algorithms be implemented in an ATM satellite communications system. But these heuristic algorithms need be validated and benchmarked before they are fielded. In this work, we employ the orthogonal array experiment (or the Taguchi method) to allocate bandwidth in a satellite communications network. We also validate and benchmark the Taguchi assignments with the results obtained by mathematical optimization. This benchmarking process allows us to quantitatively assess the performance of our approach and is recommended to be employed when developing heuristic algorithms. The close agreement between the results produced by the orthogonal array experiment method and the conventional integer programming solution methods underscores the feasibility of the orthogonal array experiment approach.