LAN Emulation Server

The second step in joining an emulated LAN is to make a connection to the LAN Emulation Server. After receiving the LES address from the LECS, a host will establish a connection to the LES. The LES may add the host to a point-to-multipoint call that is maintained by the LES with connections to every host in the emulated LAN. This point-to-multipoint connection, if created by the LES, is used to send control information to each host on the emulated LAN.

The LES acts as the ATM ARP server. Since IP and ARP work with MAC addresses, an additional address resolution step is required to convert a MAC address to the corresponding ATM address, which is used to make a connection to the target host; this resolution step is provided by the LES.