Providing an ATM medium access controller for asynchronous traffic over FDDI-II

This thesis presents the research and development for an ATM/FDDI-II hardware device called an A-MAC (ATM-Medium Access Controller). The A-MAC enables the isochronous capacity of an FDDI-II LAN to cany ATM cells between multiple ATM users connected to the FDDI-II. In effect, an FDDI-II with A-MACs functions as a distributed ATM switch. The A-MAC segments user PDUs into ATM cells and transmits those cells into timeslots on the isochronous channel. Cells received from the isochronous channel are reassembled by the A-MAC back into the original PDU.