Achieving network interconnection using satellite services

The use of satellites to provide an interconnection service for communication between distributed computer networks is the subject of RACE project 2074, `Catalyst´. This project has as its main objective the development of a first level demonstrator for achieving the interconnection of CSMA/CD, FDDI and DQDB LANs/Ms and ATM networks using ATM over a satellite service. Central to the project is the design and development of a system with the capability of mapping the functionality of any of the three LAN/MAN technologies selected, onto an ATM network which has an end to end quality of service governed by the satellite channel link. The authors detail the work undertaken at the University of Salford in both the design and development of an interface sub-system for attaching either CSMA/CD or FDDI LANs onto the ATM based satellite service and in the creation of a simulator for performance studies of the overall system