High-speed shared-media ATM-LAN for multimedia communications

Multimedia applications treat two types of media: one is a real-time medium such as voice or video, and the other is a non-real-time medium. For the widespread use of the multimedia applications, a local area network (LAN) must support communication needed to transfer both types of media. A LAN based on the asynchronous transfer mode technology is considered to be promising as a candidate for a multimedia LAN. Especially, an ATM switching system is regarded as adequate for the reason that it has scalability in the capacity. However, though many researchers are studying how to offer a connectionless service, how to achieve fast and fair dynamic bandwidth allocation and so forth in the ATM switching system, these issues are not completely resolved. For another approach, we are developing a shared-media LAN based upon the ATM technology. The ATM ring (ATMR), which is a shared-media ATM-LAN, is evaluated as a multimedia LAN. Requirements for a multimedia LAN are described, and the current issues of the ATM switching system are described. The ATMR protocol and its characteristics are explained and the ATMR prototype is assessed. Finally, the future work and conclusions are presented.