ATM Networks Were Killer Apps For Their Time

atmnwAfter about three years of being sold on the idea of ATM networking, we’re still waiting for it to arrive in earnest. The myth of what ATM will do eclipses the reality of what ATM is currently capable of doing.

Asynchronous transfer mode hardware still doesn’t support voice traffic, so the goal of data/voice network integration remains in the distance. And though MPEG has been emerging as a standard video- transmission format, the H.320 and JPEG video standards are still unsupported.

Scalability in network size is also not really available, outside of a choice between 155M-byte OC-3 and 100M-byte TAXI (Transparent Asynchronous Transceiver Interface). Investing in large-scale ATM switches is not practical until all of the ATM standards have stabilized.

There have been quite a few announcements of WAN-capable ATM switches, but vendors are waiting for ATM to become more available from the public carrier services. LAN ATM Continue reading

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