ATM NETWORKS

Switching techniques in Communication N/Ws Switching : When N/W transfer stream of data from source to destination it must assign a route (i.e; a sequence of links or channels connecting the src to the destn) and allocate a portion of the capacity or bandwidth of each channel along the route

Circuit Switching
In circuit switching, the route and BW allocated to the stream remain constant over the life time of the stream Capacity of each channel is divided into a number of fixed rate logical channels called circuits Thus circuit switching involves assigning a route and one circuit in each link along the route Circuit switching has 3 phases Connection setup phase Data transfer phase Connection teardown phase Switch computers maintain information about circuits that are busy and routing tables These computers execute algorithms for call admission policies and routing strategies. Also, call duration and other statistics needed for administration, billing and maintenance are recorded.

Circuit Switching
Ckt switching is easy to implement compared to other switching scemes Since stream is assigned a fixed rate ckt, capacity utilization is low in the case of bursty data streams Therefore suitable for voice networks, but not for n/w s designed for data transfer Due to fixed bandwidth assignment, there is no queuing delay in ckt s/w ing and we can guarantee the maximum endto-end delay from src to destn. Guaranteed delay feature is useful in video conferencing and other real time applications.

Packet Switching
Data steram originating at src is divided into packets of fixed or variable size. Time interval between consecutive pkts may vary depending on burstiness of data stream. Pkt switching make use of a store-and-forward mechanism When bits in a pkt arrive at a switch or router, they are read into a buffer and after storing entire pkt, the switch routes the pkt over one of its outgoing links Pkt remain s queued in the buffer until its outgoing link becomes idle. store-and-forward mechanism introduces random queuing delay at each link, because the delay depends on the other traffic sharing the same link In pkt S/w ing Total delay at a switch is the queuing delay plus the time taken to transmit the entire pkt

Packet Switching
Packet Switching nein two ways Datagram packet networks Virtual circuit packet networks Datagram Packet Networks In datagram packet networks, each packet within a stream is independently routed A routing table stored in the router(switch) specifies the outgoing link for each destination The routing table may be static or may be periodically updated Each packet must contain bits denoting the address of the src and destn, though it may be a significant overhead if the average packet size is small The overhead may be negligible if the pkt size is long, but then the transmission time and queuing delay will become large

Virtual circuit packet Networks

Similar to ckt switched networks, a fixed route is selected before any data is transmitted in a call setup phase Unlike ckt switched networks, there is no notion of fixed rate ckt or logical channel All pkts belonging to the same data stream follow this fixed route called virtual circuit. Each pkt must contain a bit string called virtual circuit identifier , usually shorter than src and destination address needed for datagrams In virtual ckt packet networks call setup phase takes time and creates a delay not present in datagram pkt networks

Asynchronous Transfer Mode(ATM)

Pkt and ckt switching N/Ws are suitable for message and CBR traffic respectively ATM networks combines the good features of Pkt and ckt switching ATM is a Packet switched, virtual circuit network ATM N/W s were first developed in the mid 1980s with the goal of designing a single networking technology that would transport real time audio, video as well as text, e-mail and image files ATM N/Ws can provide services with a specific Quality of Service (QoS) to meet the needs of all types of traffic.

Main features of ATM

1. 2. ATM provides connection oriented service, with data transferred over a virtual circuit(VC) Data is transferred in a 53-byte packet format called ATM cells.
5 byte header + 48 byte payload

Basic ATM Cell Format 5 Bytes Header

3. 4.

48 Bytes Payload

Cells from different VCs that occupy same channel or link are statistically multiplexed. ATM switches may treat the cell streams in different VC connections unequally over the same channel in order to provide different QoS.

ATM services
ATM forum specifies Five categories of services that an ATM network can provide:
Constant Bit Rate Variable Bit Rate- Real Time (VBR-RT) Variable Bit Rate- Non Real Time (VBR-NRT) Available Bit Rate Unspecified Bit Rate Guaranteed Frame Rate

ATM services Parameters

ATM services differ in the Parameters of traffic and the QoS that they specify. Parameters of traffic are defined by the Generalized cell rate algorithm (GCRA) that controls arrival times of cells. These parameters of traffic are
Peak cell rate Sustained cell rate Initial cell rate Cell delay variation tolerance Burst tolerance Minimum cell rate

ATM services Parameters

Parameters of QoS are:
Cell Loss Ratio Cell Delay Variation Peak to peak cell delay variation Maximum cell transfer delay Mean cell transfer delay

ATM Architecture
End system AAL End system AAL

ATM Switch ATM

ATM switch

ATM

ATM

ATM

PHY

PHY

PHY

PHY

ATM Architecture
ATM adaptation layer (AAL) is only present in the edges of the ATM network AAL is analogous to the internets transport layer On the sending side, AAL is passed data from the higher level application or protocol (such as IP if ATM is used to connect IP devices) On receiving side it passes data upt o higher layer protocol or application

ATM Architecture
AALs have been defined for different services
AAL for constant bit rate services AAL2 for variable bit rate services AAl5 for IP data gram transport AAL 3 for connection oriented streams AAL4 for connectionless messages Among the services provided by AAL are error detection and segmentation/reassembly Unit o data handled by AAL is referred to as AAL protocol data unit

AAL5 PDU
0-65535 PDU pay load 0-47 PAD 2 Length 4 CRC

PAD bits (0-47 bytes) ensures that PDU is an integer multiple of 48 bytes, because PDU will be segmented to fit into 48 byte payloads of the underlying ATM cells Length field indentifies the size of the PDU payload, so that PAD bits can be removed by he receiver CRC field provides error detection using the same cyclic redundancy check as in Ethernet Payload can be up to 65,535 bytes long

ATM layer
ATM layer lies at the heart of the ATM architecture ATM layer defines the structure of the ATM cell and the meaning of the fields within the cell The first 5 bytes of the cell constitute the ATM header; remaining 48 bytes constitute the ATM payload

ATM cell header

The fields in the ATM ccell have the following functions Virtual Channel identifier (VCI) Indicates the virtual channel to which the cell belongs Payload Type (PT):Indicates the type of the payload contained in the cell. There are several data pay load types, maintenance pay load types, and an idle cell payload type. PT field also includes a bit that serves to indicate the last cell in a fragmented AAL PDU Cell Loss Priority (CLP): a 1-bit field used as a priority indicator. When it is set to 0, the cell is high priority and interim switches must make every effort to forward the cell successfully. When the CLP bit is set to 1, the interim switches sometimes discard the cell in congestion situations Header error control(HEC) byte Error detection bits that protect the cell header

IP over ATM
ATM network can be used to provide connectivity between IP devices

Application layer Transport layer Network layer AAL5 ATM layer ATM physical layer Link layer physical layer

ATM backbone with four entry/exit points for internet IP traffic

IP over ATM
ATM backbone can span very large area and may have hundreds of ATM switches Most ATM backbones have permanent virtual circuits(VCs) between each pair of entry/exit points Since Permanent VCs are used, ATM cells are routed from entry to exit points without having to establish and tear down VCs dynamically.

IP over ATM
Each router interface that connects to the ATM n/w needs two addresses. An IP address and an ATM address. This is similar to the IP and MAC addresses in an Ethernet interface

IP over ATM
Issues: IP datagrams into ATM AAL5 PDUs from IP addresses to ATM addresses just like IP addresses to 802.3 MAC addresses!
ATM network

Ethernet LANs

Datagram Journey in IP-over-ATM Network

at Source Host:
IP layer maps between IP, ATM dest address (using ARP) passes datagram to AAL5 AAL5 encapsulates data, segments data into cells, passes to ATM layer

ATM network: moves cell along VC to destination at Destination Host:

AAL5 reassembles cells into original datagram if CRC OK, datagram is passed to IP