James P. Janniello

The plaNET/ORBIT High Speed Network

This paper presents an overview of the plaNET/ORBIT Gigabit networking system being developed at IBM. It identifies the various network components and their functionality, and describes how the many services provided by the network are supported. The paper focuses on providing a general view on how the different components operate and interact with each other, rather than on giving detailed technical descriptions of their implementations. Instead, pointers to relevant publications are used to allow interested readers to find additional details.

ATM support in a transparent network

A generic approach to the mapping of various routing modes and packet formats onto different link layers in the plaNET network is discussed. It is argued that the necessary transformations can be performed relatively easily, at little additional cost to the network and, more importantly, without performance degradation. The approach taken and components used in plaNET to provide the simple interfacing with ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks and links are described.<<ETX>>

The Role of a DTV Edge Server in Support of Data Broadcasting Applications

With a bandwidth of 19.4 Mbps, the DTV channel has the potential to be an extremely valuable broadcast resource, yet televisions traditional use of distributing video programs to viewers does not sufficiently exploit this capability. In order to realize DTVs true potential, the DTV channel should be considered more generically as a network resource, and the potential services and applications explored. In this paper, we present a basic Data Broadcast application for automatically augmenting video news programs with auxiliary information, and then discuss a general architecture of creating a broadcast edge server. Like its Internet counterpart, the broadcast edge server provides an edge located storage system for efficiently delivering applications and content to DTV receivers while allowing the real-time pass-thru of Internet and Broadcast content as required.