Involved people at OAB: Delpino, Di Luca.
In the past two years relevant aspects of computers networks both at local (LAN)
and geographical (MAN and WAN) level have been examined, with the aim of testing
the new generation protocols at OSI level 2 and 3 (pure ATM, ATM LAN emulation,
IP next generation, OSPF). ATM in particular has been tested extensively due
to the possibility of realizing multiple high speed connections on the same
links, with a static or dynamic partition of the band.
That makes ATM attractive for all the environments with the need of multiple
and multimedia data transfers (housekeeping data, scientific data, images in
sequence, voice and video). In this context a development model for the project
of the new metropolitan research network of the Bologna town has been drawn
up. That is based on an private ATM backbone at 622 Mbit/sec, connected with
the ATM regional link, realized by means of radio frequency bridges, spanning
all over the Emilia Romagna region, where the branch offices of
the University of Bologna are located. On that model basis a hierarchical structure, formed
by a top level independent backbone interfacing a large number of campus network,
has been planned. The whole network will be operating before the summer of the
year 2001.