Introduction

Aynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) has been accepted universally as the transfer mode of choice for Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks(BISDN). ATM can handle any kind of information i.e. voice, data, image, text and video in an integrated manner. ATM provides a good bandwidth flexibility and can be used efficiently from desktop computers to local area and wide area networks. ATM is a connection- oriented packet switching technique in which all packets are of fixed length i.e. 53 bytes(5 bytes for header and 48 bytes for information). No processing like error control is done on the information field of ATM cells inside the network and it is carried transparently in the network.

ATM meets the following objectives for BISDN networks.

1) Supports all existing services as well as emerging services in the future

2) utilizes network resources very efficiently

3)minimizes the switching complexity

4)minimizes the processing time at the intermediate nodes and supports very high transmission speeds.

5)minimizes the number of buffers required at the intermediate nodes to bound the delay and the complexity of buffer management

6)guarantees performance requirements of existing and emerging applications.

Subway Map ATM Home Page