Technology Directions for the 21st Century

New technologies will unleash the huge capacity of fiber-optic cable to meet growing demands for bandwidth. Companies will continue to replace private networks with public network bandwidth-on-demand. Although asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is the transmission technology favored by many, its penetration will be slower than anticipated. Hybrid networks - e.g., a mix of ATM, frame relay, and fast Ethernet - may predominate, both as interim and long-term solutions, based on factors such as availability, interoperability, and cost. Telecommunications equipment and services prices will decrease further due to increased supply and more competition. Explosive Internet growth will continue, requiring additional backbone transmission capacity and enhanced protocols, but it is not clear who will fund the upgrade. Within ten years, space-based constellations of satellites in Low Earth orbit (LEO) will serve mobile users employing small, low-power terminals. 'Little LEO's' will provide packet transmission services and geo-position determination. 'Big LEO's' will function as global cellular telephone networks, with some planning to offer video and interactive multimedia services. Geosynchronous satellites also are proposed for mobile voice grade links and high-bandwidth services. NASA may benefit from resulting cost reductions in components, space hardware, launch services, and telecommunications services

Convergence: the next big step

Recently, web based multimedia services have gained popularity and have proven themselves to be viable means of communication. This has inspired the telecommunication service providers and network operators to reinvent themselves to try and provide value added IP centric services. There was need for a system which would allow new services to be introduced rapidly with reduced capital expense (CAPEX) and operational expense (OPEX) through increased efficiency in network utilization. Various organizations and standardization agencies have been working together to establish such a system. Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a result of these efforts. IMS is an application level system. It is being developed by 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) and 3GPP2 (3rd Generation Partnership Project 2) in collaboration with IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication Standardization Sector), and ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) etc. Initially, the main aim of IMS was to bring together the internet and the cellular world, but it has extended to include traditional wire line telecommunication systems as well. It utilizes existing internet protocols such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting protocol), and COPS (Common Open Policy Service) etc, and modifies them to meet the stringent requirements of reliable, real time communication systems. The advantages of IMS include easy service quality management (QoS), mobility management, service control and integration. At present a lot of attention is being paid to providing bundled up services in the home environment. Service providers have been successful in providing traditional telephony, high speed internet and cable services in a single package. But there is very little integration among these services. IMS can provide a way to integrate them as well as extend the possibility of various other services to be added to allow increased automation in the home environment. This thesis extends the concept of IMS to provide convergence and facilitate internetworking of the various bundled services available in the home environment; this may include but is not limited to communications (wired and wireless), entertainment, security etc. In this thesis, I present a converged home environment which has a number of elements providing a variety of communication and entertainment services. The proposed network would allow effective interworking of these elements, based on IMS architecture. My aim is to depict the possible advantages of using IMS to provide convergence, automation and integration at the residential level

A high speed fault-tolerant multimedia network and connectionless gateway for ATM networks.

by Patrick Lam Sze Fan.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-[170]).Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 2 --- Fault-tolerant CUM LAUDE NET --- p.7Chapter 2.1 --- Overview of CUM LAUDE NET --- p.7Chapter 2.2 --- Network architecture of CUM LAUDE NET --- p.8Chapter 2.3 --- Design of Router-node --- p.10Chapter 2.3.1 --- Architecture of the Router-node --- p.10Chapter 2.3.2 --- Buffers Arrangement of the Router-node --- p.12Chapter 2.3.3 --- Buffer transmission policies --- p.13Chapter 2.4 --- Protocols of CUM LAUDE NET --- p.14Chapter 2.5 --- Frame Format of CUM LAUDE NET --- p.15Chapter 2.6 --- Fault-tolerant (FT) and Auto-healing (AH) algorithms --- p.16Chapter 2.6.1 --- Overview of the algorithms --- p.16Chapter 2.6.2 --- Network Failure Scenarios --- p.18Chapter 2.6.3 --- Design and Implementation of the Fault Tolerant Algorithm --- p.19Chapter 2.6.4 --- Design and Implementation of the Auto Healing Algorithm --- p.26Chapter 2.6.5 --- Network Management Signals and Restoration Times --- p.27Chapter 2.6.6 --- Comparison of fault-tolerance features of other networks with the CUM LAUDE NET --- p.31Chapter 2.7 --- Chapter Summary --- p.31Chapter 3 --- Overview of the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) --- p.33Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.33Chapter 3.2 --- ATM Network Interfaces --- p.34Chapter 3.3 --- ATM Virtual Connections --- p.35Chapter 3.4 --- ATM Cell Format --- p.36Chapter 3.5 --- ATM Address Formats --- p.36Chapter 3.6 --- ATM Protocol Reference Model --- p.38Chapter 3.6.1 --- The ATM Layer --- p.39Chapter 3.6.2 --- The ATM Adaptation Layer --- p.39Chapter 3.7 --- ATM Signalling --- p.44Chapter 3.7.1 --- ATM Signalling Messages and Call Setup Procedures --- p.45Chapter 3.8 --- Interim Local Management Interface (ILMI) --- p.47Chapter 4 --- Issues of Connectionless Gateway --- p.49Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.49Chapter 4.2 --- The Issues --- p.50Chapter 4.3 --- ATM Internetworking --- p.51Chapter 4.3.1 --- LAN Emulation --- p.52Chapter 4.3.2 --- IP over ATM --- p.53Chapter 4.3.3 --- Comparing IP over ATM and LAN Emulation --- p.59Chapter 4.4 --- Connection Management --- p.61Chapter 4.4.1 --- The Indirect Approach --- p.62Chapter 4.4.2 --- The Direct Approach --- p.63Chapter 4.4.3 --- Comparing the two approaches --- p.64Chapter 4.5 --- Protocol Conversion --- p.65Chapter 4.5.1 --- Selection of Protocol Converter --- p.68Chapter 4.6 --- Packet Forwarding Modes --- p.68Chapter 4.7 --- Bandwidth Assignment --- p.70Chapter 4.7.1 --- Bandwidth Reservation --- p.71Chapter 4.7.2 --- Fast Bandwidth Reservation --- p.72Chapter 4.7.3 --- Bandwidth Advertising --- p.72Chapter 4.7.4 --- Bandwidth Advertising with Cell Drop Detection --- p.73Chapter 4.7.5 --- Bandwidth Allocation on Source Demand --- p.73Chapter 4.7.6 --- The Common Problems --- p.74Chapter 5 --- Design and Implementation of the Connectionless Gateway --- p.77Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.77Chapter 5.1.1 --- Functions Definition of Connectionless Gateway --- p.79Chapter 5.2 --- Hardware Architecture of the Connectionless Gateway --- p.79Chapter 5.2.1 --- Imposed Limitations --- p.82Chapter 5.3 --- Software Architecture of the Connectionless Gateway --- p.83Chapter 5.3.1 --- TCP/IP Internals --- p.84Chapter 5.3.2 --- ATM on Linux --- p.85Chapter 5.4 --- Network Architecture --- p.88Chapter 5.4.1 --- IP Addresses Assignment --- p.90Chapter 5.5 --- Internal Structure of Connectionless Gateway --- p.90Chapter 5.5.1 --- Protocol Stacks of the Gateway --- p.90Chapter 5.5.2 --- Gateway Operation by Example --- p.93Chapter 5.5.3 --- Routing Table Maintenance --- p.97Chapter 5.6 --- Additional Features --- p.105Chapter 5.6.1 --- Priority Output Queues System --- p.105Chapter 5.6.2 --- Gateway Performance Monitor --- p.112Chapter 5.7 --- Setup an Operational ATM LAN --- p.117Chapter 5.7.1 --- SVC Connections --- p.117Chapter 5.7.2 --- PVC Connections --- p.119Chapter 5.8 --- Application of the Connectionless Gateway --- p.120Chapter 6 --- Performance Measurement of the Connectionless Gateway --- p.121Chapter 6.1 --- Introduction --- p.121Chapter 6.2 --- Experimental Setup --- p.121Chapter 6.3 --- Measurement Tools of the Experiments --- p.123Chapter 6.4 --- Descriptions of the Experiments --- p.124Chapter 6.4.1 --- Log Files --- p.125Chapter 6.5 --- UDP Control Rate Test --- p.126Chapter 6.5.1 --- Results and analysis of the UDP Control Rate Test --- p.127Chapter 6.6 --- UDP Maximum Rate Test --- p.138Chapter 6.6.1 --- Results and analysis of the UDP Maximum Rate Test --- p.138Chapter 6.7 --- TCP Maximum Rate Test --- p.140Chapter 6.7.1 --- Results and analysis of the TCP Maximum Rate Test --- p.140Chapter 6.8 --- Request/Response Test --- p.144Chapter 6.8.1 --- Results and analysis of the Request/Response Test --- p.144Chapter 6.9 --- Priority Queue System Verification Test --- p.149Chapter 6.9.1 --- Results and analysis of the Priority Queue System Verifi- cation Test --- p.150Chapter 6.10 --- Other Observations --- p.153Chapter 6.11 --- Solutions to Improve the Performance --- p.154Chapter 6.12 --- Future Development --- p.157Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.158Bibliography --- p.163A List of Publications --- p.17

Application of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (Atm) technology to Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (Pacs): A survey

Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network (R-ISDN) provides a range of narrowband and broad-band services for voice, video, and multimedia. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) has been selected by the standards bodies as the transfer mode for implementing B-ISDN; The ability to digitize images has lead to the prospect of reducing the physical space requirements, material costs, and manual labor of traditional film handling tasks in hospitals. The system which handles the acquisition, storage, and transmission of medical images is called a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS). The transmission system will directly impact the speed of image transfer. Today the most common transmission means used by acquisition and display station products is Ethernet. However, when considering network media, it is important to consider what the long term needs will be. Although ATM is a new standard, it is showing signs of becoming the next logical step to meet the needs of high speed networks; This thesis is a survey on ATM, and PACS. All the concepts involved in developing a PACS are presented in an orderly manner. It presents the recent developments in ATM, its applicability to PACS and the issues to be resolved for realising an ATM-based complete PACS. This work will be useful in providing the latest information, for any future research on ATM-based networks, and PACS

IP and ATM - a position paper

This paper gives a technical overview of different networking technologies, such as the Internet, ATM. It describes different approaches of how to run IP on top of an ATM network, and assesses their potential to be used as an integrated services network

Switching techniques in data-acquisition systems for future experiments

An overview of the current state of development of parallel event-building techniques is given, with emphasis of future applications in the high-rate experiments proposed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The paper describes the ain architectural options in parallel event builders, the proposed event-building architectures for LHC experiments, and the use of standard net- working protocols for event building and their limitations. The main issues around the potential use of circuit switching, message switching and packet switching are examined. Results from various laboratory demonstrator systems are presented

IP and ATM - current evolution for integrated services

Current and future applications make use of different technologies as voice, data, and video. Consequently network technologies need to support them. For many years, the ATM based Broadband-ISDN has generally been regarded as the ultimate networking technology, which can integrate voice, data, and video services. With the recent tremendous growth of the Internet and the reluctant deployment of public ATM networks, the future development of ATM seems to be less clear than it used to be. In the past IP provided (and was though to provide) only best effort services, thus, despite its world wide diffution, was not considered as a network solution for multimedia application. Currently many of the IETF working groups work on areas related to integrated services, and IP is also proposing itself as networking technology for supporting voice, data, and video services. This paper give a technical overview on the competing integrated services network solutions, such as IP, ATM and the different available and emerging technologies on how to run IP over ATM, and tries to identify their potential and shortcomings

Future benefits and applications of intelligent on-board processing to VSAT services

The trends and roles of VSAT services in the year 2010 time frame are examined based on an overall network and service model for that period. An estimate of the VSAT traffic is then made and the service and general network requirements are identified. In order to accommodate these traffic needs, four satellite VSAT architectures based on the use of fixed or scanning multibeam antennas in conjunction with IF switching or onboard regeneration and baseband processing are suggested. The performance of each of these architectures is assessed and the key enabling technologies are identified

Applications of satellite technology to broadband ISDN networks

Two satellite architectures for delivering broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN) service are evaluated. The first is assumed integral to an existing terrestrial network, and provides complementary services such as interconnects to remote nodes as well as high-rate multicast and broadcast service. The interconnects are at a 155 Mbs rate and are shown as being met with a nonregenerative multibeam satellite having 10-1.5 degree spots. The second satellite architecture focuses on providing private B-ISDN networks as well as acting as a gateway to the public network. This is conceived as being provided by a regenerative multibeam satellite with on-board ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) processing payload. With up to 800 Mbs offered, higher satellite EIRP is required. This is accomplished with 12-0.4 degree hopping beams, covering a total of 110 dwell positions. It is estimated the space segment capital cost for architecture one would be about $190M whereas the second architecture would be about$250M. The net user cost is given for a variety of scenarios, but the cost for 155 Mbs services is shown to be about $15-22/minute for 25 percent system utilization