Thor, Bernice Lynn.

A Next Generation Computer Network Communications Architecture, CNCA, is developed in this thesis. Existing communication techniques and available networking technologies are explored. This provides the background information for the development of the architecture. Hardware, protocol, and interface requirements are addressed to provide a practical architecture for supporting high speed communications beyond current implementations. A reduction process is then performed to extract the optimal components for the CNCA platform. The resulting architecture describes a next generation communications device that is capable of very fast switching and fast processing of information. The architecture interfaces with existing products, and provides extensive flexibility. This protects existing equipment investments, and supports future enhancements.