Chapter 20. Overview of LAN Emulation

Note: See the glossary for de®nitions of the acronyms and terms used in this chapter.

The IBM 2210 implements the LAN Emulation Over ATM: Version 1.0 Speci®cation which is widely accepted as the industry standard for multivendor multiprotocol interoperability. This chapter introduces basic LAN emulation (LE) concepts in the context of the MSS implementation. It begins by examining the motivation for installing emulated LANs (ELANs).

LAN Emulation Bene®ts

LAN emulation protocols allow ATM networks to provide the appearance of Ethernet and Token-Ring LANs. Although LAN emulation does not exploit all of the bene®ts of ATM, it is useful in migrating to ATM technology and lowering network management costs. It enables you to utilize high-speed ATM links and still protect your software and hardware investments.

Software investments are protected because application interfaces are unchanged (LAN emulation is implemented within the data link control layer, which is below the device driver interface of end stations). Hardware investments are protected with forwarding engines that bridge LAN and ATM networks so that existing adapters and wiring can continue to be used.

LAN emulation allows incremental installation of ATM adapters in stations with high-bandwidth requirements, for example, servers and engineering or multimedia workstations. Physical and logical views of a simple LAN emulation example are illustrated in 14.

© Copyright IBM Corp. 1994, 1998

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