An ATM port can have a major interface and one or more subinterfaces. An ATM subinterface is a mechanism that enables a single physical ATM interface to support multiple logical interfaces. Several logical interfaces can be associated with a single physical interface.
ATM subinterfaces meet the specifications in RFC 2684—Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM Adaptation Layer 5 (September 1999), which replaces RFC 1483. All references to ATM subinterfaces in this chapter are still to ATM 1483 subinterfaces.
ATM 1483 subinterfaces are identified by user-defined numbers. To select a subinterface, you append a subinterface number to the port-level interface atm command.
When you create an ATM 1483 subinterface, you must configure a permanent virtual circuit (PVC). Protocols such as ATM require one or more virtual circuits over which data traffic is transmitted to higher layers in the protocol stack.
Figure 1 shows a typical point-to-point ATM interface column.
Figure 1: ATM Interface Column
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