Research On The Technology Of Ethernet Access To SUPANET

When DWDM technique raised the raw bit rate in a single fiber towards 80Gbps (enough to support all the telephone or cable TV traffic in a big city), it had motivated the idea of merging three separate networks (i.e. telephone, cable TV and computer networks) into an integrated, packetized digital network. However, Internet was not catered for such converged service because of its' complicated three-layer user-data translate platform ,low transmission efficiency and absence of QoS insurance.For the very reason, SC-Netcom Lab(Sichuan Network Communication Technology Laboratory) has introduced the Single User-data transfer & switching Platform Architecture Network (SUPANET). The SUPANET simplifies User-data transfer & switching platform (U-platform) into a single physical layer platform by adopting the out-band signaling concept, while keeps existing protocol stacks of Internet in the Signaling & Management platform (S&M-platform) to enable interoperation with Internet. The key technique enabling the single U-platform is called EPFTS(Ethernet-oriented Physical Frame Timeslot Switching). SUPANET provides multimedia traffic with a QoS-insured, connection-oriented transmission service.SUPANET is a high bitrate switch network with a new architecture. The frame in User-data platform is called Ethernet-oriented Physical Frame, its' payload length is the max length of Ethernet MAC frame. With the enhancement of the Ethernet network on the LAN market, whether the Ethernet user can access to SUPANET conveniently and efficiently without any more software or hardware investment is one of the key factors that SUPANET is admitted by Ethernet users.The basic idea of Ethernet access to SUPANET is to simulate a "user host" for each application traffic by distributed a virtual MAC for that application . When Ethernet frame is created for a application in data-link layer, it's SOURCE MAC ADDRESS field was filled by the virtual MAC. As that Ethernet frame was transferred to SUPANET access switch, It can be encapsulated directly to a EPF and switched to a correct virtual path by the map table of virtual MAC and VLI (Virtual Line Index) without the need of more decapsulation and encapsulation operation.A User-Network Interface (UNI) between the Ethernet host and SUPANET access switch should be designed. The UNI signaling defines the roles and process of the interaction between the Ethernet user and SUPANET access switch.The author's main contributions can be summarized as:A. The main idea and access process of Ethernet access to SUPANET are expatiated.B. A UNI signaling based on access technology was designed.C. The access process was simulated by OPNET.