Broadband communication network architecture for business environments

The authors discuss several major changes in private networks and propose a node architecture based on cell-based switching. The most remarkable change is the growing role of personal computing terminals (PCTs) seen in both the personal computers and the workstations of today's offices. This necessitates broadband communication facilities because of the rapidly improving performance of PCTs. Since these systems are information- and computing-resource-transparent, network configurations will have to change to accommodate PCTs and a variety of server resources. It is noted that the flexibility and adaptability offered by the proposed architecture will allow PCTs to reach their full performance potential. The authors introduce a laboratory model based on the proposed architecture and present experimental results.<>