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Internet and the atm: experiments & enhancements for convergence and integration

Objective

Main Objective

-Set up technology islands and integrate IP over ATM networks based on different (existing and new) IP switching solutions.

-Develop, evaluate and demonstrate, in the project islands, enhancements to IP-switching solutions with support for specific added value features in the areas of: Multicast Services; Quality of Service (QoS) demand and provisioning; Host Mobility in a multicast environment; and Resource Management.

-Interconnect the different IP switching islands over a Pan-European ATM WAN.

-Perform Multicast trials across the island internetwork using IP multicast applications.

-Contribute to relevant standard organisations & ACTS dissemination mechanisms on issues relating to IP-ATM convergence and integration approaches.

Technical Approach

The project will initially use isolated prototype islands based on different core ATM switching equipment. In the first phase of the project, distinct architectural solutions for IP switching will be selected and installed on these islands. The selected technologies aim to provide an efficient basic best-effort unicast service capability for IP traffic using ATM as the layer-2 transport network. The functionality, performance and scalability issues of the selected solutions will be addressed. In the second phase, the focus in each island will be the introduction of support for specific specialised features. Each island will concentrate on developing and installing, over the basic configuration, a selection of enhanced features based on the partners experience and area of specialisation. The enhancements will add features; such as multicast service, QoS reservation and provisioning, mobility support and resource control capabilities. While the individual features will be developed and demonstrated in isolation, the multicast service will eventually be incorporated in all prototype networks and demonstrated in a co-ordinated trial. For this purpose, the islands will be interconnected by a suitable network forming a large-scale interconnection network.

Summary of the Trials

The trials in the individual islands aim at demonstrating and evaluating the different baseline IP-switching solutions and the enhanced feature prototypes that IthACI will implement. The first island is based on the NEC-IPSPFACTO technology and is located in Germany and Belgium, the second island is based on the CISCO-TAG switching technology and is located in Greece, the third island is based on ALCATEL technology and is located in Belgium. Project islands will be interconnected by wide area ATM PVC connections. Once basic connectivity has been achieved, the terminals will run, in parallel, different applications from various classes such as WWW-access, FTP, NFS access, Internet-Telephony, Mbone-Conferencing or video distribution. Initially this will be on a point to point basis where Quality of Service parameters will be defined and monitored, and performance bottlenecks will be identified. The performance of this configuration will be compared to an RFC1577/NHRP solution. The evaluation tests and demonstration scenarios will be specified while taking into account the particular IP-switching technologies available in the project and the testing requirements of the selected additional features to be developed and implemented in the islands.

The enhanced features, depending on the progress in their development, will be demonstrated and evaluated. Once the enhanced islands are operational, IthACI will study and implement the interconnection of the islands in a trial where the interoperability between the different IP switching technologies will be investigated. The minimum solution will be based on a layer 3 router-based subnet interconnection. The feasibility of a more efficient solution using shortcuts and supporting direct multicasting will be analysed. This includes a study of IP multicast routing protocols, in order to select the most appropriate one for implementation of the multicast interconnection. This preparatory study will take into account practical features (e.g. available code) as well as conceptual criteria (scalability, minimum control overhead, and existence of appropriate protocol messages to monitor the tree dynamics etc). It is explicitly intended to shortcut as much of the multicast tree as possible, with IP-layer processing wherever it cannot be avoided (e.g. when islands can not be interconnected at ATM level, or because of fundamentally incompatible technologies). For demonstration purposes, an IP multicast application will be run over the multicast interconnection (e.g. video server, Mbone session).
Expected Achievements

Expected achievements of the project include:

-Testing and evaluation of different IP switching architectures as the basis for a high performance Internet infrastructure.

-Implementations of multicast, QoS provisioning, mobility and resource control features on efficient IP-ATM switching architectures.

-Insights into the issues of interoperability, scalability and resource management for large-scale deployment of integrated IP-ATM networks, with special focus on multicast.

-Resource management schemes for optimum use of underlying switching network capacity.

-Enhancements to QoS supporting framework for differentiated IP quality-of-service exploiting the advantages of ATM transmission infrastructures.

Expected Impact

The demand for higher throughput IP networks is huge. The IthACI project focuses on a new technology to satisfy this hunger for bandwidth. In particular, the shortcut technique combines IP (layer 3) quite directly with ATM (layer 2). Since the latter is designed to be very fast, transmission of IP packets via ATM will dramatically enhance the throughput. Moreover, IP switching equipment can be produced sufficiently timely to meet the market demand. Hence, the project is very likely to have an immediate impact on a market with high economic potential as current trends and market research data have demonstrated.

Main contributions to the programme objectives:
Main deliverables
Testing and evaluation of different IP switching architectures as the basis for a high performance Internet infrastructure.
Contribution to the programme
The IthACI shortcut technique combines IP (layer 3) directly with ATM (layer 2) for very fast, transmission of IP packets via ATM. The project is very likely to have an immediate impact on a market with high economical potential.
Key Issues

IthACI will investigate and enhance schemes for the efficient integration of IP and ATM network technologies. The project will study and deploy convergence and integration mechanisms between the ATM and IP technology domains addressing: i)the scalable growth of the current Internet to meet continuing demands, ii)the provisioning of higher quality Internet services, iii)the increased penetration of ATM technology which will accelerate the transition to the IBCN model of networks which offer integrated services. The project also evaluate the impact on the previous facilities due to the requirements for efficient IP multicasting over ATM, accommodating QoS demands, mobility and resource control. The project will make critical assessment of emerging solutions, perform incremental development on existing solutions addressing specific feature enhancements and generate recommendations based on observations of analysis and applied experimentation.

Fields of science

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Funding Scheme

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinator

Algosystems S.A.
EU contribution
No data
Address
4,Sardeon str
17121 Athens
Greece

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Participants (7)

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Last update: 19 March 1999

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/AC337

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