Experimental study of extended HIPPI connections over ATM networks

Abstract

To extend the widespread use of the high performance parallel interface (HIPPI) as a networking solution for high-speed communications, the 25-meter distance limitation must be solved. Three options available for alleviating the problem of distance limitation are serial-HIPPI, HIPPI/SONET mapping or HIPPI-ATM mapping, and IP routing. Serial-HIPPI, HIPPI/SONET mapping and HIPPI-ATM mapping provide extended HIPPI connectivities at the physical layer, while IP routing forwards data between the HIPPI networks and other networks at the network layer. We study two feasible solutions of this problem, HIPPI tunneling (HIPPI-ATM mapping) and IP routing. We compare these two schemes in terms of network connectivities, protocol overhead, and flow control. The performance evaluation of one implementation of HIPPI tunneling and IP routing is presented. The experimental performance suggests that a high degree of bandwidth utilization was achieved by both HIPPI tunneling and IP routing in this implementation.