The Fairisle
project was a three year effort at the Computer
Laboratory begun in October 1989, to design and build an ATM local
area network, and to investigate the architecture and management
algorithms appropriate to the local area.
The project included the construction of ATM switches, host interfaces, device drivers, and management software. Within the Computer Laboratory, other research projects such as multimedia, operating systems, workstation architecture and distributed systems are now using the bandwidth provided by the Fairisle network, and providing the network with real data.
This paper presents a report of the the final outcome of the construction phase of the project. Section 2 presents an overview of the switch design and other associated hardware components; section 3 describes the associated low-level software and firmware; section 4 describes the switch services; section 5 presents the raw performance figures for a variety of typical uses.
The network is now in use as a platform in support of further ATM switch and network research, and as a testbed for Quality of Service and Call Acceptance Control experiments funded by British Telecom.