Data link Control Emulation .- Rapid Protoyping for High-speed
Dimitrios N. Serpanos, José R. Brunheroto, Julio Nogima · 1998
Data Link Control (DLC) emulation is an efficient and effective methodology for rapid-prototyping of high-speed network technologies. In a high-speed network attachment, DLC emulation replaces the original protocol stack with one that has two DLC protocols and performs all the necessary conversions between them. The lower portion of the protocol stack im lements the prototyped network, while the cations to take advantage of the improved characteristics of emerging network technologies without restructuring, rewritin , or making any investment in applicaadapter. In this fashion, evaluation of new technologies is feasible in real environments at a low cost. We show that DLC emulation is a flexible and general technique that supports a wide range of Data Link Control protocols, and we demonstrate its effectiveness through a case study, where an FDDI adapter is used to provide SMDS connectivity over T1 and T3 links. We show that DLC emulation achieves high performance at a significantly low development cost for an attachment to a new network technology, because frame conversion between DLC rotocols can be implemented efficiently on-the-fly using rapid-prototyping har cp ware techniques. upper portion implements the original K igh-speed network stack. This allows applition, protocol, or system software that inter 7 aces to the original high-speed network