Architecture and Design of Connectionless Data Service for a Public ATM Network

The deployment of a high speed, wide area ATM network introduces a “backwards compatibility” dilemma. While emerging ATM networks must be capable of transporting traffic sources such as digital voice and video, many of the design choices that optimize ATM for voice and video make the transport of traditional connectionless data traffic difficult. This paper proposes the overlay of a virtual datagram network of connectionless servers onto a public ATM network to provide connectionless service. This method provides low transfer delay and efficiently utilizes network resources. Architectural issues are described, and an implementation of a connectionless server is presented.