This paper proposes and performs the primary feasibility evaluation on Flow Attribute Notification Protocol (FANP), which is a protocol between neighbor CSR (Cell Switch Router) nodes for the management of cut-through packet forwarding, in order to apply label switching paradigm. In cut-through packet forwarding with label switching, a router doesn't have to perform conventional IP packet processing for the received packets. FANP indicates the mapping information between a data-link connection and a packet flow to the neighbor node. FANP defines two key procedures, i. e. , one is the VCID Notification Procedure, and the other is the Flow-ID Notification Procedure. The VCID Notification Procedure lets the label switching paradigm over the label swapped data-link, such as ATM link, though the other label switch architecture can not work over the label swapped data-link. The primary evaluation of FANP has been performed using the prototype system and with the actual packet statistics. The result shows that, with a corporate backbone level, the label switch router system with FANP would work well.

This paper proposes a high throughput small latent IP packet delivery architecture using ATM technology in a large scaled internet. Data-link network segments, including ATM network segments, are interconnected through routers. A connection oriented IP packet delivery will be provided by IP (including both IPv4 and IPv6) with a certain resource reservation protocol (e.g. RSVP). When the router attached to ATM network segment has a mapping function between the flow-ID (e.g. in the SIPP header) and the VPI/VCI value, the small latent connection oriented IP forwarding can be provided. Also, when the router has cell-relaying functionality, the small latent connectionless IP forwarding can be provided, even in IPv4. The source router, where the source end-station belongs to, will be able to transfer the connectionless IP packet to the destination router, where the destination end-station belongs to, through the concatenated ATM connections (ATM-VCCs) without any ATM-VCC termination point. When all of the network segments are ATM-LAN, the proposed architecture can accommodate about up to 222 (4106) end-stations with two network layer processing points. And when the network is scaled up hierarchally, we can accommodate larger number of end-stations. For example, we can accommodate 1015 end-stations by a three layered network. Then the maximum number of actual network layer processing points between source and destination end-stations can be ten. Here, 1015 is the maximum number of end-stations in ISDN and also it is the target number of accommodated end-stations for IPv6.