CELL-ATTACHED FRAME ENCAPSULATION SCHEMES FOR A GLOBAL NETWORKING SERVICE PLATFORM

This paper proposes cell-attached frame encapsulation schemes in which encapsulation processing can be performed without cell reassembly. Th e proposed schemes are especially useful for a global networking servi ce platform to integrate widely distributed user LANs into a single in ternetwork. The platform itself is an ATM-based frame forwarding netwo rk composed of access networks and a core network. These elemental net works are interconnected via edge nodes. In order to improve network i nterworking performance, these edge nodes should perform encapsulation processing without cell reassembly. Our proposal solves this problem. In the proposed schemes, when the first cell of a cell-divided access network frame arrives at an ingress edge node, a core-header-cell is generated from the IP header described in the first cell payload. This core-header-cell is first transmitted and then succeeding incoming ce lls including the first cell are forwarded cell-by-cell as soon as the y arrive. Since cell-by-cell forwarding-processing reduces frame forwa rding latency and cell buffer capacity, these schemes are effective fr om the viewpoint of both performance improvement and cost reduction.