Analysis of the server and connection based approaches to connectionless service for ATM networks

Two major approaches for providing connectionless service for ATM networks are connection based and server based. In the connection based approach, the connection oriented service of ATM is used to interconnect pairs of ATM end systems. The end systems are then responsible for routing connectionless datagrams through each other thereby providing a connectionless service. In the server based approach, connectionless servers in the ATM networks directly provide a connectionless service. An end system may send all its packets to one connectionless server where each packet is individually routed to other connectionless servers en route to the destination. This paper analytically examines the resource requirements for these two approaches. Speci#cally, it #nds the number of ATM connections required to support a given workload, connection set-up rate and required number of connectionless servers. # This research is supported in part by grants from the University of California MICRO program, the Paci#c Bell CalREN program, Hughes Aircraft, Nippon Steel Information and Communication Systems Inc. #ENICOM#, Hitachi Ltd., Hitachi America, Tokyo Electric Power Company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation #NTT#, Hewlett Packard #HP#, and SUN micro systems. 1