Abstract

ATM switching is equivalent to fixed length packet switching combined with a special routing procedure through the network. A part of the ATM cell header called the virtual channel identifier (VCI) must be read at each switching facility and replaced with a new VCI value. VCI translation is done at the switch input because it is simpler to do it at the same time we determine internal switch routing for each cell. There is at present no way of doing VCI translations in the optical domain.

© 1992 Optical Society of America