High-speed IP packet forwarding over Internet using ATM technology

Framework of IP packet delivery with high throughput and small latency using ATM technology in large scaled internets is proposed, while keeping the current subnet model. Router has the mapping functionality between flow-identifier (e.g. in IPv6 header) and VPI/VCI value to forward IP packets cell-by-cell, rather than the conventional packet-by- packet forwarding. By using this cut-thru IP packet forwarding, both resource reservation oriented IP packet flows (i.e. IP packet flow provided by RSVP) and nonresource reservation oriented IP packet flows (i.e. best effort service) experience less packet delivery latency and obtain higher throughput, compared to the conventional hop-by-hop packet forwarding does. In order to perform the cut-thru IP packet forwarding using cell relaying capability in the router, routers exchange the information how the IP packet flows are aggregated into ATM- VCC. This information exchanging is hop-by-hop base, and the cut-thru decision is a matter of every router's local decision. With the hop-by-hop cut-thru IP packet forwarding, soft-state oriented and scalable QoS-ed high speed communication platform can be provided.