Saturday, December 1, 2007

Connection-oriented


Connection-oriented systems (e.g., POTS, ISDN, X.25, TCP, ATM) establish connections between a pair of communicating systems. In the phone system a connection is associated with a physical dedicated link. In ATM, a connection is a virtual link (circuit) which is characterized by a Class of Service which it must deliver to the users of the circuit (e.g., a constant bit rate service for uncompressed voice over ATM).

Connection oriented systems support a set of protocols for transmission of data and another set of protocols for establishing connections (e.g., SS7, Q2931). End systems request that the network establish a connection by sending messages to the network over a pre-defined control channel (circuit). Once the network has established a data channel (circuit) per the request, data is forwarded over that channel. Connections may be established by a network manager as Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVCs) or may be dynamically established by system software as Switched Virtual Circuits (SVCs).

Introduction - ATM characteristics


The layered approach to describing ATM stresses the interactions between the many layers and sub layers and the passing of service data units up and down the layered stack. This kind of approach explains how ATM software and hardware components come together to form an ATM node.

The peer approach to describing ATM addresses the peer-to-peer operations between ATM devices. This approach stresses the functions provided by ATM hardware and software and how these functions interact to support an ATM network.



Relevant ATM Characteristics