A Performance Study on Frame Relay and ATM Interworking Unit and Its Applications: Connectionless Data Service and VPN

Bih-Hwang LEE  Sheng-Wang YU  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E80-B   No.6   pp.948-962
Publication Date: 1997/06/25
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Communication Networks and Services
Keyword: 
ATM,  CL,  frame relay,  interworking,  VPN,  

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Summary: 
The interworking between high speed networks is receiving more attention recently. Among them, Frame Relay/Asynchronous Transfer Mode (FR/ATM) interworking is foreseen in the near future to provide seamless service across geographic areas. In the heterogeneous network interworking environment, an interworking function facility called the interworking unit (IWU) is generally interposed between these networks to perform the essential protocol conversion. As an intermediate network component, IWU will have great influence on network performance in terms of data latency. The performance issues of IWU are identified and addressed in this paper. These issues include frame processing schemes, frame shaping schemes, and cell processing schemes. The cell processing performance issues are further investigated via simulation experiments. Connectionless (CL) data service is also expected to be one of the most important applications for FR/ATM interworking. Some alternative methods for providing CL service over FR and ATM are described. We propose an enhanced protocol stack in the IWU to interoperate with the ATM network which uses the direct method to provide CL service. To proveide VPN service, we propose a feasible VPN communication structure based on the FR and ATM network interworking.