ATM switching

UDHAY PRAKASH P uday3prakash@gmail.com

TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

 ATM switches are central to the operation of ATM networks ATM is Based on BISDN standards

TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

ATM network and header formats

TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

ATM switch
Both VPI and VCI are

given for a logical channel.

TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

Generic ATM Switch

Input Ports

Switch Fabric

Output Ports

VPI VCI
5 TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

Control Unit
15 oct 2012

Switch Ports
Provide the physical connection to other ATM entities

Dedicated point-to-point links

Each port (or card) is for a particular type of interface and

particular data rate Ethernet,T1,...) N inputs, N outputs

(e.g., OC-3, DS-3, JPEG,

TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

Switch Fabric
Defines the interconnection between the input ports and the

output ports Distinguishing characteristic of different types of ATM switches (e.g., shared memory, banyan, Benes, hypercube, ...) Affects performance (cell delay, cell loss)

TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

Buffering
Some switches are bufferless

Some switches are buffered

Buffers provide physical storage (i.e., memory) to hold cells

that cannot yet be sent on their desired output ports Uses RAM, DRAM, or FIFO...

TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

Buffering (Contd)
Buffering can be located at the input ports, at the output

ports, internal to the switch fabric, or any combination Buffers are usually limited in size:
e.g., 100 cells per port e.g., 4096 cells per port

Buffer size and location affects performance

TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

VPI / VCI Table

Physical memory that is used to keep track of how to map

cells of different VCs from input ports to output ports Translation table:

INPUT Port VPI VCI

1 3
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OUTPUT Port VPI VCI

1 2 5 2 12 33
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4 27

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VPI / VCI Table (Contd)

Entries initialized during call setup

Lookup done for each data cell

Determines routing tag to be used for switch fabric

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TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

Control Unit
Controls entire operation of switch

Cell switching
Signalling (UNI and NNI) Call Admission Control (CAC)

Usage Parameter Control (UPC)

Accounting statistics

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TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

ATM Switch Functionality

Cell switching
also known as label switching or label multiplexing cell with VPI = a and VCI = b on input port c is sent out with

VPI = d and VCI = e on output port f uses VPI / VCI table simple fast hardware switching (for data cells)

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TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

ATM Switch Functionality

Signaling
participate in UNI signaling protocol (edge switches) participate in NNI signaling protocol (core switches) connection setup and teardown update VPI / VCI table

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TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

ATM Switch Functionality

Call Admission Control (CAC)
makes decision to accept / reject new call considers traffic descriptor (TD) and QOS requested by the

new call (e.g., PCR, SCR, CLR, CDV) considers available resources, and (potential) impact on the QOS of existing calls many different approaches proposed

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TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

ATM Switch Functionality

Usage Parameter Control (UPC)
mechanism to monitor incoming traffic flows on a VPI / VCI

basis check for conformance to traffic descriptor e.g., leaky bucket, dual leaky bucket can provide traffic shaping tags or discards non-conforming cells

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TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012

References
Sumit Kasera, ATM Networks.

Harry Perros, Introduction to ATM Networks

ATM forum

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TSSN 4 ECE JNTUHCEH

15 oct 2012