31.12 Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

Contributed by Harti Brandt.

31.12.1 Configuring classical IP over ATM (PVCs)

Classical IP over ATM (CLIP) is the simplest method to use Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) with IP. It can be used with switched connections (SVCs) and with permanent connections (PVCs). This section describes how to set up a network based on PVCs.

31.12.1.1 Fully meshed configurations

The first method to set up a CLIP with PVCs is to connect each machine to each other machine in the network via a dedicated PVC. While this is simple to configure it tends to become impractical for a larger number of machines. The example supposes that we have four machines in the network, each connected to the ATM network with an ATM adapter card. The first step is the planning of the IP addresses and the ATM connections between the machines. We use the following:

Host IP Address
hostA 192.168.173.1
hostB 192.168.173.2
hostC 192.168.173.3
hostD 192.168.173.4

To build a fully meshed net we need one ATM connection between each pair of machines:

Machines VPI.VCI couple
hostA - hostB 0.100
hostA - hostC 0.101
hostA - hostD 0.102
hostB - hostC 0.103
hostB - hostD 0.104
hostC - hostD 0.105

The VPI and VCI values at each end of the connection may of course differ, but for simplicity we assume that they are the same. Next we need to configure the ATM interfaces on each host:

hostA# ifconfig hatm0 192.168.173.1 up
hostB# ifconfig hatm0 192.168.173.2 up
hostC# ifconfig hatm0 192.168.173.3 up
hostD# ifconfig hatm0 192.168.173.4 up

assuming that the ATM interface is hatm0 on all hosts. Now the PVCs need to be configured on hostA (we assume that they are already configured on the ATM switches, you need to consult the manual for the switch on how to do this).

hostA# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.2 hatm0 0 100 llc/snap ubr
hostA# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.3 hatm0 0 101 llc/snap ubr
hostA# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.4 hatm0 0 102 llc/snap ubr

hostB# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.1 hatm0 0 100 llc/snap ubr
hostB# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.3 hatm0 0 103 llc/snap ubr
hostB# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.4 hatm0 0 104 llc/snap ubr

hostC# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.1 hatm0 0 101 llc/snap ubr
hostC# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.2 hatm0 0 103 llc/snap ubr
hostC# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.4 hatm0 0 105 llc/snap ubr

hostD# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.1 hatm0 0 102 llc/snap ubr
hostD# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.2 hatm0 0 104 llc/snap ubr
hostD# atmconfig natm add 192.168.173.3 hatm0 0 105 llc/snap ubr

Of course other traffic contracts than UBR can be used given the ATM adapter supports those. In this case the name of the traffic contract is followed by the parameters of the traffic. Help for the atmconfig(8) tool can be obtained with:

# atmconfig help natm add

or in the atmconfig(8) manual page.

The same configuration can also be done via /etc/rc.conf. For hostA this would look like:

network_interfaces="lo0 hatm0"
ifconfig_hatm0="inet 192.168.173.1 up"
natm_static_routes="hostB hostC hostD"
route_hostB="192.168.173.2 hatm0 0 100 llc/snap ubr"
route_hostC="192.168.173.3 hatm0 0 101 llc/snap ubr"
route_hostD="192.168.173.4 hatm0 0 102 llc/snap ubr"

The current state of all CLIP routes can be obtained with:

hostA# atmconfig natm show