N 3 : A Native NBMA Networking stack

This paper presents the work done by the group of authors in the framework of the N 3 project, sponsored by Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies, since April, 1997. N 3 is a protocol stack for the provision of native services over networks that belong to the NBMA (Non Broadcasting Medium Access) family, like ATM, ISDN, etc. N 3 resembles an alternative way to networking, rather than traditional MAC/IP/LAN Emulation/MPOA stacks. With this approach, N 3 focuses on simplicity regarding a) minimal protocol translation, b) transparent and scalable node addressing, c) extended transport capabilities, d) QoS monitoring and guarantees, e) user friendly naming, f) support for modern applications' requirements g) unrestricted scalability and transparent inter-domain coverage. The initial design and implementation of N 3 is based on ATM and the described efforts have taken place on FORE Systems ATM switches and terminal adapters, as well as SUN Solaris platforms. The full paper describes in detail the components of the N 3 stack, the architectural difficulties and decisions, the operation of legacy and native services of N 3 , as well as a complete set of measurements of the performance, from the point of view of both call-setup procedures and end-to-end throughput, with respect to the various supported classes of service.