ATM interface technologies for an ATM switching system

Abstract

Realization of the economical, reliable, and efficient ATM interface block becomes an important key to development of the ATM switching system when we consider new issues raised recently. In this paper, we summarize requirements for the ATM interface block and present the UNI (User Network Interface)/NNI (Network Node Interface) architecture to meet these requirements. We also evaluate the performance of the multiplexer adopting the various multiplexing schemes and service disciplines. For ATM UNI/NNI interface technologies, we have developed a new policing device using the priority encoding scheme. It can reduce the decision time for policing significantly. We have also designed a new spacer that can space out the clumped cell stream almost perfectly. This algorithm guarantees more than 99 % conformance to the negotiated peak cell rate. Finally, we propose the interface architecture for accommodation of the ABR (Available Bit Rate) transfer capability. The proposed structure that performs virtual source and virtual destination functions as well as a switch algorithm can efficiently accommodate the ABR service.