Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is a connection-oriented technology in which all communication is based on virtual connections established prior to the transfer of data. It is expected that the bulk of traffic carried by the ATM network will be data traffic, e.g., local area network (LAN) internetwork traffic. Hence, a major issue regarding ATM is the support for connectionless (datagram) traffic. A scheme for the efficient support for connectionless traffic in ATM LAN's based on trees of virtual connections is proposed, In this scheme, a sink tree is built for every switch in the LAN. Each tree provides an efficient means of routing connectionless traffic from any switch in the network to the sink switch (root) of the tree. The sink tree solution may also be used to broadcast connectionless messages in the reverse direction. The trees can easily be updated to adapt to topological changes or congestion in the network. A protocol for refreshing the tree structure using the ATM switch routing tables is described. An adaptive rate control solution, in conjunction with fast back pressure at the ATM layer, is presented. It is shown that this scheme achieves high utilization of available bandwidth for connectionless traffic, has low cell loss probability, and small overhead.
