TechLAN: an experimental high-speed ATM LAN

TechLAN is a cheap high-speed ATM network being developed at the Computer Networks Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Technion. Its purpose is twofold; to provide a low cost solution to sharing an ATM switch connection among several ATM users, and to serve as a LAN which provides local interconnection between ATM users without interfering with the traffic of the ATM switch connection. The combination of these two goals, and especially the need to support Quality of Service (QOS) parameters associated with ATM connections within a shared environment is particularly challenging. TechLAN achieves these two goals using Buffer Insertion Ring and Shared Bus Switch architectures. TechLAN will provide the foundation over which new networking techniques and new applications will be experimented with.