Concepts and Protocols

ATM Networks

Concepts and Protocols

ATM Networks

Senior System Analyst, DSQ Software, New Delhi, India Graduate Student, Ohio State University, Ohio, USA

SUMIT KASERA PANKAJ SETHI

Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited

NEW DELHI McGraw-Hill Offices New Delhi New York St Louis San Francisco Auckland Bogot Caracas Kuala Lumpur Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan Montreal San Juan Singapore Sydney Tokyo Toronto

Tata McGraw-Hill
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Information contained in this work has been obtained by Tata McGraw-Hill, from sources believed to be reliable. However, neither Tata McGraw-Hill nor its authors guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information published herein, and neither Tata McGraw-Hill nor its authors shall be responsible for any errors, omissions, or damages arising out of use of this information. This work is published with the understanding that Tata McGraw-Hill and its authors are supplying information but are not attempting to render engineering or other professional services. If such services are required, the assistance of an appropriate professional should be sought.

2001, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited No part of this publication can be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers This edition can be exported from India only by the publishers, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited ISBN 0-07-463776-2 Published by Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited 7 West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110 008 and typeset in New Century at The Composers, 20/5 Old Market, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110 008 and printed at S P Printers, E-120, Sector 7, Noida Cover Design: Kam Studio RZXYCDDCDDCLL

Dedication To my mother, Sneha Lata Kasera for making me what I am Sumit To my parents, and brothers Pankaj

Preface
It goes without saying that we are now living in a networked world; a world where networking technologies play a very important role in our lives. Be it the railway booking counter, or automated banking, be it the ubiquitous Internet or the global wireless telephony systems, a life without networks is inconceivable. Among the plethora of networking technologies that have emerged over the last decade, ATM is considered to be a breakthrough one. The popularity and pervasiveness of ATM lies in the fact that it seamlessly integrates local area network and wide area networka concept also referred to as single network for desktop-to-the-core. Moreover, ATM provides a single platform for voice, video and data, thereby leveraging the process of network convergence. Apart from this, ATM also provides quality of service. All these factors are considered unique selling points of ATM technology. When we first laid our hands on ATM technology and wanted to know more on the subject, we found to our surprise that there was hardly any book that provided a conceptual treatment to ATM. This was despite the fact that ATM technology had attracted widespread interest. Majority of the books were a shadow of ATM standards, derived from ITU-T and ATM Forum publications. Moreover, these books had too many underlying assumptions and were hopefully inadequate in giving an insight into the topic. The concepts got hidden in too many abbreviations and too many jargons. The result was that people were more concerned with whether ATM was a telecommunication network or a datacommunication network, rather than trying to understand what either of them meant. We also observed that authors of technical books wrote with the assumption that technical stuff ought to be complicated because it is technical. Contrary to the above viewpoint, we believed that everything is more or less simple unless made otherwise. Given this, we felt a need to write a book on the subject that was simple, and easy to understand; a book that could solve the problems that we were facing when we were studying; a book that provided a comprehensive overview of ATM, and a book that offered fewer assumptions. This thought provided us the motivation to write a book. Around the same time, we got an opportunity to work on the development of ATM signaling software. This project provided us in-depth knowledge of ATM because signaling

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Preface

covers almost every aspect of ATM. Since then, we have worked on a number of projects on ATM, as well as on related technologies like Frame Relay (FR) and Internet Protocol (IP). These projects have provided us the requisite technical know-how to write this book. This book was written in nearly 2 years time. During the first half of the activity, Pankaj was actively involved in writing the manuscript, after which he left for the US to pursue MS at the Ohio State University. Since then he has contributed by reviewing the manuscript and providing miscellaneous support.

The Book
The organization of this book is novel and unprecedented. We have tried to ensure that the concepts and the protocols are treated separately. To achieve this, we have divided some of the chapters into two parts (as is the case in Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9). In these chapters, the first part elucidates the general concepts and principles, while the second part explains how the concepts and principles apply to ATM. For other chapters, we have provided enough background information so that the reader can comprehend complicated topics. The underlying idea is to do away with most of the assumptions and to make this book as self-sufficient and simple as possible.
n

Chapter 1 talks about the factors that have a significant influence on shaping the current technologies. This is useful in the sense that it provides the perspective as to why ATM is what it is. Chapter 2 refreshes the basic topics on networking. The key concepts discussed in this chapter include types of network services (connection-oriented versus connection less), protocol layering (layered abstraction and OSI model) and switching (circuit-switching versus packet switching). Chapter 2 provides the background knowledge for Chapter 3. Chapter 3 essentially provides an overview to ATM, which includes a number of aspects of ATM like its definition, genesis, basic principles, virtual-circuit concepts, and ATM protocol stack. A preview of some of the precursor technologies like X.25, frame relay, and ISDN is also provided in this chapter. Then, this chapter looks at the relationship between ATM and B-ISDN, which people find quite confusing. Chapter 4 expands upon the ATM protocol stack discussed in the previous chapter and provides detailed information. The protocol stack essentially comprises physical layer, ATM layer, and ATM Adaptation Layer (AAL). This chapter covers all these layers. In

Preface

ix

particular, it discusses a number of physical layer options for ATM, the functions of ATM layer, and provides a detailed description of various AALs. The next five chapters (i.e. Chapters 5 to 9) are where the beauty of this book lies. As briefly stated earlier, each chapter has two parts. Part one discusses basic concepts, while part two talks about how the concepts apply to ATM.
n

Chapter 5 is titled Traffic Management and talks about traffic management concepts, tools and techniques. The important topics covered in this chapter include connection admission control, congestion control, and flow control. Apart from these topics, the concept of traffic-descriptors and service-descriptors is also elucidated. It is in this chapter that the concept of Quality of Service (QoS), which forms the strength of ATM, is explained. Chapter 6 talks about switch design. Following the style of Chapter 5, the first part of this chapter talks about buffering techniques including input buffering, output buffering, and shared buffering. This part also discusses important switching architectures like sharedmemory architecture, shared-medium architecture and space-division architecture. In part two, a number of ATM switch architectures including Prelude, PARIS, Knockout, Starlite, and Moonshine are discussed. Chapter 7 is probably one of the most well-written chapters. The reason being that we had implemented the complete ATM signaling software. The implementation provided us with the first hand knowledge about ATM signaling. The first part of this chapter talks about signaling concepts like signaling channels, signaling models and signalingprotocol-design. The second part talks about various ATM signaling standards (like Q.2931, Q.2971, and UNI 4.0). Chapter 8 is titled Addressing and Routing. The first part is very comprehensive and provides a very good understanding of addressing and routing. The second part is a detailed description of Private Network-Node Interface (PNNI), which is a routing and signaling protocol for ATM. Note that PNNI is a signaling as well as routing protocol, but is discussed only in Chapter 8, and not in Chapter 7. Chapter 9 discusses network management. The first part explains three important network management models, OSI model, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) model and Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) model. The second part explains how these models apply to ATM. In particular, Chapter 9 is a discussion of essential ATM network management standards, as provided by various governing bodies. Chapter 10 is the chapter on interworking. Unlike the previous chapters, it has only one part. Nonetheless, all topics mentioned in this chapter are briefly introduced (provided

Preface

the topic has not been covered earlier). The key topics covered are LAN Emulation (LANE), IP over ATM (IPOA), and Multiprotocol over ATM (MPOA). Since this book provides comprehensive coverage of the basic concepts of ATM, avoids complicated mathematical formulae, and makes minimal assumptions, it will benefit a wide spectrum of audience. This includes students studying ATM for the first time or doing research on ATM; engineers engaged in switch design, protocol stack development and technical research; and marketing people. All will find this book extremely readable and very informative. The authors would also like to add that the views expressed in the book are entirely their own and does not reflect the views of their company.

Suggestions
l

Your comments are valuable to us. So, please send your comments and suggestions for improvement at s.kasera@mailcity.com. We would be glad to incorporate your comments in the next edition of the book. Since standardization is an ongoing activity, some of the standards quoted in this book have been superseded by newer specifications. Some of these have been explicitly mentioned in the reference section. For others, the reader is advised to cross-check from the appropriate governing body. For ATM Forum specifications, the reader could browse www.atmforum.com. For ITUT recommendations, could go to www.itu.ch. For Internet RFCs, the reader could browse http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html. SUMIT KASERA PANKAJ SETHI

Acknowledgements
We would first like to thank Dr Ravi Mittal (SBU Head, Telecom and Networking division, DSQ Software) for providing us continuous motivation and whole-hearted support in this endeavour. When we started writing the book, we lacked the confidence to undertake such a task. It was due to his constant guidance that this book-writing endeavour was successful, and that too, with reasonable satisfaction. We would also like to acknowledge the effort of our technical lead at Hughes Software Systems, Arun Punj, for mentoring and grooming us. Then, we would like to thank the organization where we first workedHughes Software Systems, Gurgaon for providing us the right environment for learning. It goes without saying that Hughes is one of the best organizations in the field of telecommunication to begin your career with. In particular, we would like to thank two very senior executives of Hughes Software Systems, Mr Vinod Sood and Mr Aadesh Goyal for being role models. We would then like to thank the technical reviewers, Rajiv Gupta, Nishit Narang, and K R K Mohan, who painstakingly reviewed the whole manuscript and provided valuable comments. In the first release of the manuscript, chapters on signaling and routing were combined and written as a single chapter. It was after receiving comments from Rajiv that the chapter was divided into two parts, and basic concepts of routing added. Nishit and K R K Mohans review comments were also quite thorough and helped us in improving the content as well as technical accuracy of the book. Then, we would like to thank the entire team at Tata McGraw-Hill for helping us in producing this book. We wish to also thank our alma mater Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur, India), and all its professors for providing us the necessary technological foundation to write a book. In addition, Sumit Kasera would like to acknowledge the role of his family in making this book a reality. Among the family members, his mother Sneha Lata Kaseras contribution stands out and hence the dedication. He would also like to thank his father J. P. Kasera, sister Smita, brother-in-law Gaurav, brother Rajiv, and aunt Manju Banka for their support. Sumit would also like to thank his buddiesRitesh Singh, Narendra Singhal, Saket Saraf, Sandeep Goyal and Pankaj Chauhanfor continuous encouragement.

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Acknowledgements

Pankaj Sethi would like to thank his mother Kiran Sethi, father Rajendra Sethi, and his elder brothers Rajeev and Sanjeev for their contribution in shaping his career and making this book a reality. Pankaj would also like to thank Sumit Kasera for holding on to the dream after he left the scene.

Copyrights
It may be acknowledged
l

that some text extracted from ITU material is reproduced with the prior authorization of the Union as copyright holder; the sole responsibility for selecting extracts for reproduction lies with the beneficiary of this authorization alone and can in no way be attributed to the ITU; the complete volume(s) of the ITU material, from which the texts reproduced are extracted, can be obtained from: International Telecommunications Union Sales and Marketing Service Place Des Nations- CH- 1211 Geneva 20 (Switzerland) Telephone: +41 22 730 61 41 (English) / +41 22 730 61 42 (French) / +41 22 730 61 43 (Spanish) Telex: 421 000 uit ch / Fax +41 22 730 51 94 X.400: S=sales; P=itu; A=400net; C=ch Email: sales@itu.int / http://www.itu.int/publications SUMIT KASERA PANKAJ SETHI

Contents
Preface Acknowledgements 1. 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 vii xi 1

Drivers of the Communication World

Introduction 2 Technological Drivers 2 Market Drivers 8 Concluding Remarks 13 Bibliography 14

2.

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10

Building Blocks of Communication Networks

Introduction 16 What is a Communication Network? 16 Concepts and Elements of a Communication Network Network Services 19 Network Topology 22 Protocol Layering 23 Multiplexing 43 Switching 46 Geographical Extent 55 Concluding Remarks 58 Bibliography 58 Introduction 60 What is ATM? 62 Genesis of ATM 66 Basic Principles of ATM 66 Precursor Technologies 75 B-ISDN and ATM 82 ATM Standards 92

15

17

3.

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

Overview of ATM

59

xiv
3.8 3.9 4.

Contents

ATM Market Study 97 Concluding Remarks 99 Bibliography 100 Introduction 104 ATM Reference Model 104 Physical Layer 106 Asynchronous Transfer Mode Layer 131 ATM Adaptation Layer (AAL) 141 Concluding Remarks 169 Bibliography 169 103

ATM Protocol Stack: Physical Layer, ATM Layer and AAL Layer
4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

5.

Traffic Management
PART 1: BASIC CONCEPTS 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 Introduction 172 Concept of Traffic 172 Concept of Service 174 Traffic and Service Characteristics of Voice, Data and Video 176 Traffic Management 180 Traffic Contracting 180 Traffic Shaping 182 Traffic Policing 184 Priority Control 185 Flow Control 187 Congestion and its Control 191 Flow Control Versus Congestion Control 199 PART 2: TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT IN ATM 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18 5.19 Traffic Management in ATM Networks 200 ATM Traffic Descriptors 201 ATM Service Descriptors (QoS Parameters) 204 Factors Affecting QoS Parameters 206 Service Categories 208 QoS and QoS Classes 212 Elements of ATM Traffic Management 212
NETWORKS

171

Contents

xv

5.20 5.21 5.22 5.23 5.24 5.25 5.26 5.27 5.28 6.

ATM Traffic Contracting and Call Admission Control 214 Cell Conformance and Connection Compliance 217 ATM Traffic Shaping 220 ATM Traffic Policing: Usage Parameter Control 221 ATM Priority Control 226 ATM Flow Control 227 ATM Congestion Control 234 Dynamics of TCP Traffic Over the ATM Networks 237 Concluding Remarks 237 Bibliography 238 241 PART 1: BASIC CONCEPTS

Switching
6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Introduction 242 What is Switching? 242 Performance Measures in Switch Design 244 Architectural Issues in Switch Design 245 Switching Architecture 257 PART 2: SWITCHING IN ATM 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 Switching in ATM 271 A Typical ATM Switch 272 Case Study of ATM Switching Architectures 275 Concluding Remarks 291 Bibliography 291

7.

Signalling
PART 1: BASIC CONCEPTS 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Introduction 294 Signalling Complexity in Telecommunication, Virtual Circuit-based and Datagram Networks 295 Taxonomy of Signalling Channels and Techniques 296 Signalling Issues 298 Signalling Models 304 PART 2: SIGNALLING IN ATM 7.6 Signalling in ATM 308

293

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7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 8.

Contents

ATM Signalling Reference Model 309 Point-to-Point Signalling 311 Point-to-Multipoint Signalling 333 Concluding Remarks 348 Bibliography 349 351 PART 1: BASIC CONCEPTS

Addressing and Routing

8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 Introduction 352 Addressing 352 Classification of Addresses 353 Address Structure 356 Routing 361 Routing Protocol Requirements 363 Classification of Routing Protocols/Techniques 364 Core Routing Concepts 368 PART 2: ADDRESSING AND ROUTING IN ATM 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 The ATM Address Structure 375 ATM Routing 378 PNNI Protocol 379 PNNI Signalling Protocol 404 Concluding Remarks 411 Bibliography 411

9.

Network Management
PART 1: BASIC CONCEPTS 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 Introduction 414 What is Network Management? 414 Network Management Standards 415 OSI Management Framework 415 Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) 421 Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) 431

413

Contents

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PART 2: NETWORK MANAGEMENT IN ATM 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 10. Network Management in ATM 442 ATM Network Management Reference Model 444 Operations and Maintenance (OAM) 446 Integrated Layer Management Interface (ILMI) 457 AToMMIB 467 Concluding Remarks 469 Bibliography 470 Introduction 474 Traditional LAN Technologies 474 ATM in LANs 476 LAN Emulation (LANE) 478 Classical IP Over ATM (RFC2225, Earlier RFC1577) 498 Next Hop Resolution Protocol (NHRB) 506 MultiProtocol Over ATM 512 Concluding Remarks 518 Bibliography 518 473

ATM Interworking Standards

10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8

Index

521

PNNI Signalling Protocol 8.12

Bibliography Bibliography Bibliography Bibliography