A Prototype ATM Network for Real Time Control of the LHC

The LHC accelerator aims at injecting, accelerating and colliding beams with very well controlled beam parameters (e.g. momentum, orbit, tune and chromaticity). This is a non-trivial task since the super conducting main bending magnets will generate field errors with dynamic effects that may result in beam loss. To overcome this problem, real time control of beam parameters via the Power Converters has been proposed. This requires site wide deterministic communication of control data. In this paper we will outline some aspects of a prototype deterministic network for the LHC with a core based on ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) communication technology.