I don't have experience with ATM LANE. Its not too popular now so I'm having trouble finding a definitive answer

Would this configuration work, the goal is to use an OC3 circuit to bridge Ethernet between two sites:

Equipment at each site:
Catalyst 5000 switch with basic supervisor
1x WS-X5158 card (ATM LANE Dual PHY OC-3 Module (MMF))
1x WS-X5403 (GigE line card)


My confusion is that the Cisco docs for the card say "LANE requires an ATM switch that supports User-Network Interface (UNI) 3.0 or 3.1 and point-to-multipoint signaling, for example, the Cisco LightStream 1010 ATM switch." -- What I want to do is connect them together without a LightStream ATM switch.

3/18/2008 10:12:02 AM

I'm going to post a preemptive "I have no idea."

ATM is a dead technology.


EDIT: Actually, thinking way back to circa 1998, i think i remember that you need an ATM Switch Processor to do what you want.



[Edited on March 18, 2008 at 10:19 AM. Reason : asdf]

3/18/2008 10:15:07 AM

Quote :

"I'm going to post a preemptive "I have no idea." ATM is a dead technology."

[Edited on March 18, 2008 at 10:22 AM. Reason : .]

3/18/2008 10:21:18 AM

yea the docs i have found so far say you need a atm switch processor to provide LECS and LES function (LANE Configuration Server and LANE Server), and that the card I am talking about only provides LEC (LANE Client).

that sucks

i dont want to use ATM either but I can't find another reasonable way to run service over OC3 without spending approx $10k for some telco transport gear that will do it.

3/18/2008 10:30:21 AM

MPLS AToM

3/18/2008 10:33:15 AM

suggestion for hardware with OC3 interfaces? something cheap, not a cisco 7600 or 6500

3/18/2008 10:44:50 AM

does it have to be ATM? could you go POS or even something like metro-E?

or is this dependent on what a service provider offers?

3/18/2008 11:04:07 AM

You can run OC3 ATM interfaces on 3600's - they are old enough where they should be reasonably cheap (I dont really know what "cheap" is for you tho).

[Edited on March 18, 2008 at 11:05 AM. Reason : .]

3/18/2008 11:05:10 AM

yea a 3600 router is cheap. i've never used a cisco router to do bridging before, i will have to look into that. if i setup the 3600 to do route or some kind of tunnel, i'm sure it wont be able to handle 100M+ of throughput

the service provider would not be ATM-specific, so POS should work, thanks for the suggestion. I need to do more research

3/18/2008 11:13:20 AM

if the media type isn't specific, and throughput is important, a metro ethernet or QinQ tunnel solution might be another thing to look at. I think the 3550 is the lowest end switch that can do 802.1q double tagging.

Plus with metro E, extending your LAN between two sites becomes transparent.

however, being that i just make this stuff work, i have no idea what one would cost on ebay or whatever, so it could be out of your price range...

3/18/2008 11:39:06 AM

I'm trying to make it work with an OC3 as the WAN circuit, as its a lot cheaper to get an OC3 telco circuit than 100M Metro-E.

I've found that there are a lot of older switches such as 3Com and Fore/Marconi that do ATM<->Ethernet switching but they must be connected to an ATM switch, i think.

3/18/2008 11:58:45 AM

You should be able to do it without an atm switch in between, set one side "atm uni side network
type private [version {3.0 | 3.1 | 4.0}] " and one side "atm uni side user type private".. But i haven't dont that before

3/18/2008 12:19:32 PM

^ I searched for those commands and only found them in docs for:


This chapter provides an introduction to the Catalyst 8540 MSR, Catalyst 8510 MSR, and LightStream 1010 ATM switch routers.



In case anyone is following along at home.. I have found a cheaper alternative for a simple media converter box. RAD makes a GigE <-> OC3 converter, its about $2600, or a FastE <-> OC3 is about $1800.

Still researching all options though.

3/18/2008 2:25:23 PM

oh..

you may want to look into http://www.andanetworks.com/etherreach2000series.html we use them and they seem to work pretty well, simple to configure.

3/18/2008 4:24:40 PM

^ thanks, sent them an email yesterday but havent heard back yet

3/18/2008 4:57:15 PM