• Information and Communications Magazine
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.61-70
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• 1996

In this paper, the architecture of the LAN Emulation service defined by the ATM Forum is introduced. In order to use the vast base of the existing LAN application software in ATM network. LAN Emulation provides a MAC layer service emulating connectionless services of legacy LANs on ATM networks. LAN Emulation forms a logical overlay network, called and emulated LAN, on top of an ATM network. LAN Emulation service comprises a set of LAN Emulation Clients(LECs) residing in end stations of an emulated LAN and three logical service entities : LAN Emulation Configuration Server (LECS), LAN Emulation Server(LES). and Broadcast and Unknown Server(BUS). LEC utilizes the services provided by these three servers to provide seamless interworking between legacy LANs and ATM networks, and to support transparent communications between LAN applications over ATM.