Cell Relay Archive

[andy@legion.demon.co.uk (Andy Leigh)]

Dear all,

the time has come...

We really need to start tying down an ATM Address structure for our
organisation (c 25k employees, UK-based, no private links leaving the
country) and I'm looking into what's needed. I've searched the web and
found a few references, and it seems that everyone feels as I do,
namely that something has to be done, but breaking too soon could
cause problems later on. However, we have to do something fast,
considering the amount of ATM popping up all over.

My thinking is this: It's a private network, so don't use E.164. We
might need multiple Telcos to supply our WAN needs, so don't use NSAP
E.164. This just leaves DCC and ICD. Given that we're very much
UK-based, we don't really need an International identifier (although,
we _are_ well known internationally). Which leaves me with the DCC
NSAP-type address. 

My question is this: What is everyone else doing? And, what is the
most popular system today? (I think I was told that the ICD was the
most popular)

Also, the High Order DSP can be broken up into subnets, to allow
hierarchical information hiding and aggregation (just like IP). I've
not seen any references on how to go about this. Are there rules, like
IP (RFC1121). Specifically, how is the mask confifigured? Do the bits
need to be contiguous? Are any numbers illegal (like IP, where
network, subnet and host addresses must not be all 1s or all 0s)?

Any advice or experience you have would be gratefully received! If you
haven't thought about this before, now's youe time to dig into the
debate.


Andy