Internetworking: NPS ATM LAN.

The objective of this research is to create, build, and test an electronic information infrastructure at NPS based on ATM cell relay, and to lay the groundwork for future ATM work at NPS. One aspect of this research is to critique ATM as a future networking technology for DoD and the U.S. Navy. This research demonstrates five fatal flaws of ATM with respect to the military environment First, there is the interoperability between switches. There is no way to guarantee communication between switches. Second, there is ATMs incompatibility with IP. There is no native way to multicast with ATM. Overcoming the multicasting problem is probably the greatest ATM problem to solve, and on-going research has yet to find a native ATM solution to this problem. Third, there is ATMs inflexibility to change. Myriad long-haul problems exist. Forth, there is the human factor. The expertise that exists in the ATM field is nominal due to the immaturity of the technology. Fifth, there is the crossover problem. The crossover system from primary to backup mechanisms must be reliable. ATM has not solved the problem of crossover. If a connection is broken, there is no standby connection waiting to immediately take over and this scenario is exacerbated in the already problematic multicast situation. Before DoD becomes too committed to ATM, these five issues need to be explicitly and fully resolved.