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Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 07:38:40 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mark Tinguely <tinguely@plains.nodak.edu>
Message-Id: <199607231238.HAA19617@plains.nodak.edu>
To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: freebsd-hackers ATM-FR virtual interface
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 pete@sms.fi says (forwarded from freebsd-atm):

>  To throw my opinion into the game since I consider that I've seen most
>  what the boxes do today and how they are being used is that there is
>  different scenarios where you want to either group (group == >=1 VC's)
>  for a NBMA logical interface, have a point-to-point logical interface
>  (with broadcast capability) on a single VC or have a point-to-point or
>  NBMA interface with dynamically established connections. All these
>  should have the possibility of having multiple VC's for a single
>  destination with variance in QoS. Throwing LANE into the game you also
>  have to support logical broadcast interface with ARP.
>  
>  Unclear enough? :-)

A single network session mapped into a single VC is a trend (Ipsilon
licensed software with DEC, et al) to use the ATM switch as a IP switch.
I think multiple IP VCs between two hosts will be very common.

The original question was should:

1) each LANE/IP VC be viewed as a seperate addreable interface. If we have
   two paths between the same hosts, we have two adapters (atm0, atm1, etc)
   between the two hosts.

2) an ATM adapter be viewed as a mega-virtual IP adapter that can multiple
   IP/MAC address (ie., one adapter one name, no matter the LAN setup).

3) the ATM virtual IP adapter has a single IP/MAC number which is made up
   of all the VC that contain that local IP/MAC address. It is possible for a
   single ATM card could have multiple virtual IP adapters. This combines
   all VCs that make a emulated IP conection into a single virtual adapter.
   Multiple VC beween hosts will use the same virtual adapter; If you
   use different emulated networks for two sessions they belong to different
   virtual adapters eventhough they bot use the same ATM adpater.

I switched my mind from option 2 to option 3.

--mark.