ATM FUNCTIONAL REFERENCE MODEL

To describe an ATM network and the various network components (ATM mux, ATM cross connect, ATM switch, ATM Access Devices, ATM Network Termination Unit), we will refer to the ATM functional reference model shown below.

Figure 2: ATM reference model There are three main functional blocks:

The User Plane in charge of transporting the various users information (voice, data or video) to their destination, according to the subscribed traffic contracts. It relies on the ATM layer for multiplexing and switching, with guaranteed Quality of Services (QOS). For that purpose, the user information (data protocol or particular media) is converted to ATM via the "User Protocol or Media Adaptation" layer and the "ATM Adaptation Layer (AAL)".

The Control Plane for the connection set up and release according to subscribed traffic contracts. Various types of connections are supported: symmetrical or asymmetrical point to point, multipoint, multicast, unicast, etc.). It also uses the AAL, ATM and physical layers. A dedicated layer is used to map the "control protocol" onto ATM in order to ensure high reliability. The Management Plane for ATM monitoring and configuration.

The following presentation will be organized according to the ATM functional reference model and we will proceed accordingly with:

the ATM layer and its new differentiating services (versus TDM or PM) ,

the Physical layer with ATM over SONET/SDH and over LAN wiring the ATM adaptation layer the Control plane for connection management the user's high layer protocol or media mapping the Management Plane

ATM LAYER
The ATM layer provides the following services:

Cell transmission : generation, reception, validation Cell multiplexing/demultiplexing, cell relaying, cell copying Cell payload discrimination Support of multiple QOS classes Traffic management: usage control, traffic shaping, congestion notification Connection assignment and removal

Those services are supported through the ATM protocol data unit so called ATM cell.

ATM CELL STRUCTURE

The ATM cell structure is represented in the next table with its two variants "UNI "and "NNI". "UNI cells "are used at the User to Network Interface (UNI), "NNI cells" at the Network to Network Interface (NNI) connecting two ATM networks. Type ATM CELL HEADER Overhead PAYLOAD 5 Bytes 11 % 48 bytes

UNI GFC VPI VCI PT CLP HEC NNI VPI 4 3 1 8 bit 16 bit 8 bit bit bit bit Review of the different cell header fields:

GFC: used at the UNI interface and originally intended to support simple multiplexing implementations. No standardized use of this field exists. The current standards define for this field a "0000" value coding.

PT: used to discriminate payload types (user's or management data), to indicate congestion status and to mark end of AAL5 framing (see AAL ), with the following encoding:

PT code
000 001 010 011 100

SIGNIFICANCE

NOTES

User data cell - EFCI=0 - AAL5_EOF=0 User data cell - EFCI=0 - AAL5_EOF=1 User data cell - EFCI=1 - AAL5_EOF=0 User data cell - EFCI=1 - AAL5_EOF=1 OAM F5 segment associated cell OAM F5 end-to-end associated cell Resource Management Cell

EFCI=0: no congestion AAL5_EOF=1 : end of AAL5 framing

OAM F5 is a maintenance flow (see Management plane ) Resource management cell: used for ABR flow control (see traffic management )

101 110

111

For future use

CLP: indicates the priority of a cell. A cell with CLP=1 can be destroyed by the network in case of congestion HEC: error checking of the header to ensure proper processing of the received header fields VCI-VPI: User channel identified by a combination of a Virtual Path (VP) and a Virtual Channel (VC). Those two parameters characterize the user channel in terms of origination and destination but also in terms of the subscribed class of traffic. They also identify full or empty cells and also non-user's data as shown below.

VPI VCI PT 0 0 0 ID ID ID ID ID ID ID ID 0 0 0 3 4 ID ID 5 2 1 3 000 *** 100 0x0 0x0 100 101 0xx 0xx 0xx 110

CLP USAGE 1 0 1 x x x x c c c x Idle cell identification Unassigned cell OAM F3 - physical layer Segment OAM F4 - Virtual Path End-to-end OAM F4 - Virtual Path Segment OAM F5 - Virtual Channel End-to-end OAM F5 - Virtual Channel Point to Point Signaling channel Broadcast Signaling channel Meta-signaling channel Resource management cell for VP

NOTES Recommended by ITU Recommended by ATM Forum

See "Management plane"

Dedicated signaling channels. VPI=0 commonly used between user and local exchange See "traffic management"

ID 0 ID

ID 16 48

110 xxx xxx

x 0 0

Resource management cell for VC ILMI : Interim Local Management Interface PNNI: Private Network-Network Interface Management between user and network Dynamic routing protocol

The Virtual Paths and Channels are innovative concepts that position ATM as the ideal technology to build Virtual Networks (VN) as Virtual LAN (VLAN), Virtual Enterprise Network (VEN) or Virtual Private Network (VPN) capable of supporting multiple services & media.

ATM VIRTUAL PATH & CHANNEL

With ATM several types of connections are possible :Virtual Paths equivalent to flexible "digital lines", Virtual Channels that will carry the end-users communication applications. A connection is not only characterized by its end-points : source and destination but also by traffic service quality parameters (peak & average throughput, cell loss, transit delay). The VCs are transported on VPs, themselves on Transmission Paths (TP) or Physical Links. A VC or VP connection is made of VC or VP Links interconnected via multiplexers, crossconnects or switches.

ATM NETWORK INTERFACES

To assure ubiquitous broadband ATM communications, standards for interoperability of ATM products and ATM networks are defined (still an ongoing work) by the ITU for the ATM public services and by the ATM forum for private ATM network. The ITU reference connection model (identical to narrowband ISDN) is shown on the next figure as well as the

ATM network interfaces.

UNI (User-to-Network Interface) provides for interconnection of end systems to an ATM switch with precise definition of the ATM transmission and switching services with the related exchanged signals (ATM transmission layer and ATM signaling).

At present the more unified interface is the UNI 3.1 a merge of ATM forum and ITU specifications. New enhancements (signaling & routing, traffic management, configuration) are part of UNI 4.0 with still ongoing work. To be noted: the existence of distinct private and public UNIs although with a very few differences, the main one being the addressing plan (see "switching section"). ATM Forum works also on the definition of a Residential UNI

NNI (Network-to-Network Interface) is intended for interconnection of ATM switches. If it is a private interconnection, the interface is the PNNI (Private NNI) specified by the ATM forum. If it's public, the interface is the (Public) NNI and is defined by the ITU.

The NNI is a more complicated interface, with an ATM layer similar to UNI (extended VPI cell structure but with signaling, addressing and routing more elaborate. Work is not really stabilized yet in that field.

B-ICI (Broadband Inter-Carrier Interface) connects ATM networks of two service providers. ILMI (Interim Local Management Interface): used to perform interface management between an end system and a private or public switch as well as between switches. Through SNMP and MIBs (see "management section"), configuration and

supervision can be done directly between ATM network elements. It's similar to the Frame Relay LMI.

ATM PHYSICAL LAYER

The different functions of this layer are split into two sublayers as presented in the next table.

Sublayer

Functions
HEC generation and verification Cell scrambling and descrambling Cell delineation Path signal indication Time phasing-pointer processing Multiplexing Scrambling/descrambling Transmission frame generation/recovery

Transmission Convergence TC

Physical Media Dependent Bit timing, line coding Physical medium (PMD)

PMD: The characteristics of the main Physical Media used for ATM are summarized hereafter.

Physical Carrier SDH-STM4 SDH-STM4 SDH-STM1 SDH-STM1 SDH-STM1 SDH-STM1 TAXI (FDDI) PDH-E3/DS3 ATM25 PDH-E1/DS1 DH- DS1 AIMUX

Bit rate (Mbps) 622 622 155 155 155 155 100 45/34 25.6 2.048 1.544 N*

Media SM-1300um fiber MM-1300um fiber SM-1300um fiber MM-1300um fiber UTP5/UTP3 Plastic-1300um fiber MM-1300um Coax-75ohms UTP3 TP/Coax-75ohms TP Same as PDH

Line Encoding NRZ NRZ NRZ NRZ NRZ/64CAP NRZ NRZ-4B5B HDB3/B3ZS NRZI HDB3 AMI/B8ZS idem

Distance

Use

unlimited* WAN 300 m unlimited 2 km 100 m 50 m 2 km unlimited 100 m unlimited unlimited idem LAN WAN LAN LAN LAN LAN WAN LAN WAN WAN WAN

E1/DS1

E1/DS1

* : "unlimited" distance because of the PDH & SDH WAN carrier networks Acronyms: SM: Single Mode (fiber) - MM: Multimode - UTP: Universal Twisted Pair AIMUX: ATM Inverse Multiplexer

1. A broad range of transmission bit rates are possible for ATM from 1.544 to 622 Mbps. To fill in the bit rate hole between E1/DS1 and E3/DS3, an Inverse Multiplexing scheme is defined to transport an ATM "N*(E1 or DS1)" stream on N parallel E1/DS1 physical links.

TC (Transmission convergence): responsible to insert and recover ATM cells in the bit stream of the Physical media. ATM cells mappings into SDH and PDH carriers are standardized. A mapping example of ATM over STM1 (155 Mbps) is shown below.

Bytes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 H1 B2 A1 B1

SDH Line & Section Overhead (OH)** (9 bytes) A1 B1 A1 B1 H2* H2* H3 K2 H3 H3 A2 A2 A2 C1 C1 C1

Path OH J1 B3 C2

SDH Payload

ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM ATM

H1* H1* H2 B2 B2

G1 -H4 ---

Z2 Z2 Z2 -ATM 9 **: fore more details, refer to the SONET/SDH tutorial A1,A2,B1,C1: Section management Channels - B2: Line error check H1,H2,H3: pointer to the STM-1 payload start J1,B3,C2,G1: Path management channels - H4: pointer to the ATM sequence start

ATM SERVICE ADAPTATION LAYER

Previously we have seen how ATM could be mapped on transport networks as SDH. The question is now how to map, on ATM, the user transmitted information flows carried on

different media (data, voice, video) with dedicated communication protocols (IP, Frame Relay, SNA, X25, ISDN, MPEG,etc.). The ATM Adaptation Layer (AAL) is responsible for the conversion between user's data and ATM cells. The AAL layer is divided into separate functional sublayers as shown on the next figure. Sublayer SSCS CPCS Significance Service Specific Convergence Sublayer Common Part Convergence Sublayer Segmentation And Reassembly Services Protocol mapping and encapsulation Timing recovery for CBR & rt-VBR Frame and channel delineation, Frame error checking Cell Segmentation & Reassembly, error detection & correction, Multiplexing

SAR

There are so many user applications able to be transported over ATM that they cannot be adapted one by one. Applications are grouped in service classes (related those of traffic management seen previously) with a different adaptation for each class. As a result, four AALs are currently defined. AAL Type AAL1 Service Class CBR Attributes Constant Bit rate Timing synchronization Connection oriented Variable Bit rate Timing synchronization Connection oriented Variable Bit rate Connection Oriented or Connectionless Variable Bit rate Connection Oriented or Connectionless Applications E1,DS1 N*64 Kbps Packetized Video, Audio

AAL2

rt-VBR

AAL3/4

VBR

SMDS

AAL5

VBR, UBR, ABR

Data and protocols (Frame Relay, IP, X25), ATM signaling

AAL1 is optimized for CBR traffic, for Circuit Emulation AAL2 is intended for variable bit rate video or audio signals, as MPEG video. It is not fully specified and is in competition with MPEG over AAL1 and AAL5. AAL3/4 is the combination of AAL3 for connection oriented traffic and AAL4 for connectionless. It's mainly used for SMDS AAL5 is the most recent AAL and replaces AAL3/4 for all data protocols except SMDS. It may also supersede AAL5.

ATM CONTROL PLANE

The user plane connections are setup and released by the control plane, by a signaling exchange between the ATM end systems and the ATM intermediate systems (switches). ATM is a Connection Oriented protocol. The transmission characteristics (QOS, throughput, latency) are fixed during all the time the connection is active. Moreover, the signaling information and the user data do not share the same channel path; ATM uses an outband signaling scheme. To identify the ATM network subscribers, there are two different standardized addressing schemes : E164 specified by the ITU for public networks and already used in ISDN and NSAP defined by the ATM Forum for private Networks. Multicast and anycasting (group addressing) is supported in addition to single addressing. ATM supports permanent and switched connections of various types:

Point to Point (symmetrical or asymmetrical) Point to Multipoint Multipoint to Point Multipoint-to-Multipoint

A large variety of switching services are or will be provided. Basic Services . Point-to-Point connection set up &release . VPI/VCI selection & assignment . Quality Of Service class request . Traffic parameters request . Subaddress support . Identification of calling party . Transit Network Selection . Basic error handling . User-to-user signaling Supplementary Services . Point-to-Multipoint . Symmetric operation . Multipoint-to-Point or Multipoint . Multiple connections setup . Call Transfer . Call Forwarding . Call Offer . Call "Do not Disturb" . Multiple Subscriber Number Etc.

To implement those services, ATM uses a special signaling protocol (although at the higher level similar to ISDN) referred to the Q2931 (ITU standard) protocol , which is embedded in the UNI 3.x and 4.0 specifications. To ensure reliable transmission of the signaling messages, a particular AAL is specified for signaling, so-called SAAL. It is based on AAL5 and adds to it a reliable transport layer. To convey the signaling information between adjacent ATM devices, a dedicated ATM channel is used (VPI=0/VCI=5 usually) To setup a route between the end users, when a setup message is received, the switches will strive for finding the best route to reach the destination but also to fulfill the traffic contract (service class, traffic parameters, QOS) requested by the user. For that purpose the ATM Forum has defined for private ATM networks:

a dynamic routing protocol , the PNNI (Private NNI), to exchange "network reachability and network traffic conditions" information between switches and an algorithm to find the best path, the GCAC (Generic Call Admission Control)

A lot of standardization work to be done in order that all the connection services attached to the Broadband ATM network be available ubiquitously

ATM MANAGEMENT PLANE

Within the ATM functional reference model (see fig 2), the management plane is in charge of managing the different ATM layers of both the user and control planes. It must also undertake management coordination across the layers and the different planes, all this in order to ensure that everything works properly. It manages faults, performances, configuration, accounting and security within the ATM network. To accomplish those different tasks, a management model has been defined by the ATM Forum on the basis of the TMN (Telecommunication Management Network) used in public networks and standardized by the ITU. The management services are structured in different layers: the Network Elements (NE) management, the network management itself, the service management. Basic Management entities (agents, managers) are accordingly defined with the interfaces interconnecting them. For each interface, a management protocol is defined: SNMP for private networks, CMIP for public networks), as well as the management information (MIB) processed in those entities and related to the ATM network and services. To simplify the configuration of ATM network devices, a special protocol, the ILMI has also been defined by the ATM Forum, with its associated MIB. To monitor in real time operational status and performance of the ATM connections (VC, VP, Transmission Path), special maintenance flows (OAM flows) are specified. They are also used to verify proper operation of the VCs and VPs through activation of loopbacks.