A 622-MB S LAN/WAN GATEWAY AND EXPERIENCES WITH WIDE AREA ATM NETWORKING/

The use of similar technology in local and wide area networks enables geographically distributed high performance applications. Key elements in achieving high performance are the appropriate use of traffic cont rol and the development of efficient gateways between LANs and WANs. E ven though the basic technology used on both sides of a gateway may be similar, the operational aspects of these elements ore significantly different. A gateway has been developed and implemented not only to su pport communications between an ATM LAN and WAN at 622 Mb/s, but also to provide a platform for conducting network control and traffic resea rch. In addition, the performance of the MAGIC WAN was evaluated, and bottlenecks were identified and analyzed. Techniques were developed an d implemented, specifically ATM cell-level pacing, to eliminate these bottlenecks. Throughput performance close to the theoretical maximum w as demonstrated. This article will describe experiences with ATM over a WAN and how the gateway was developed, implemented, and evaluated. T he results included here will show how high-speed LAN/WAN internetwork ing con be achieved and applied in many environments as appropriate co ntrol techniques and interfaces become ubiquitous.