Metropolitan Area Network Architecture and Topology of Access/Distribution

This talk describes Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) architectural concepts from a public network customer access perspective. A public network with MAN type of capabilities would serve as a transport vehicle, switch/router, bridge, and gateway to voice and data oriented customer premises equipment (CPE). The concepts presented are built on the protocol capabilities provided by the IEEE 802.6 standard, the Distributed Queue Dual Bus (DQDB). An evolution path is outlined to illustrate the migration from the current adhoc combination of networking equipment to a cohesive set of integrated network elements ascribed to in the Broadband-ISDN concept. Major topics addressed cover: functional distribution, topology of access/distribution, public network constraints, redundancy and network reconfigurability, and network security and isolation.