Cell Relay Archive

[Manish Kumar <manish@npi.stpn.soft.net>]

Flat networks characteristics -
1) All nodes are equivalent w.r.t. the routing function of the network.
2) All nodes are required to have the complete topology information for
the complete network.
3) The state of all links should be know to all nodes at all times.
4) The reachability information for all nodes should be known and be
dynamically updated.

Typically the lowest level PG in the PNNI routing hierarchy constitutes
an example of a flat network.

With respect to addressing -
1) In a flat network - addressing schemes lose significance, As you need
a hierarchy to exploit a sheme. Moreover, a flat network is supposed to
be small in size to make it easily manageable.
2) As flat networks should be small. The number of nodes in the network
is small hence influencing the size of address of nodes.

With respect to Routing -
1) The complete reachability information and link status information is
available with all nodes - so no special routing algorithms are
required.
2) Topology information is exchanged between all nodes (typically) using
flodding algorithm.

Ram.Chona@pwgsc.gc.ca wrote:

> I will appreciate if someone can enlighten me on the esential
> characteristics of Flat networks as related to Addressing and routing
> protocls. Thanks.
>
> R. Chona
> GTIS