Unknown Frame Forwarding in LANE (LAN Emulation)

Abstract

This paper investigates the merits of unknown frame forwarding in an ELAN (Emulated LAN) network supporting higher layer TCP applications. Our simulation result show that if Data Direct VCC setup time is significant in large networks, forwarding of a single unknown data frame is desirable only if the unicast approach is employed. If the broadcast approach is used for forwarding the unknown data frame in a large network, then our simulations show that a simpler ELAN network that does not support unknown frame forwarding has better throughput performance. In the case of forwarding multiple unknown data frames, our studies also show the same conclusions as that of the single unknown frame forwarding case.