Flow control in the high-speed Thunder and Lightning ATM network

Advances in fiber-optic and VLSI technology are leading to the development of multi-gigabit wide-area networks based on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). The Thunder and Lightning network project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is currently building a high-speed ATM switch in which each link operates at 40Gb/s. The Instant Start protocol, developed for the Thunder and Lightning network, maximizes throughput by allowing transmission to begin without a reservation, while guaranteeing loss-free communication even when the network cannot handle the initial rate of transmission. Instant Start is able to provide this behavior when using first-in first-out (FIFO) buffers. This paper discusses the problems of exercising flow control in the high-speed Thunder and Lightning network and describes the techniques used by the Instant Start protocol to overcome them.

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