Overview

In 1992, a group of interested parties developed a set of standards-based specifications called the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). This was a step at developing a single set of standards for the integration of voice, data, video, and multimedia traffic on a single backbone network. Prior to this development, the industries offered separate standards and networks for voice, others for data, and still others for video communications. Above and beyond that, data networks were also treated differently with separate data networks for point-to-point needs, dialup data, and packet-switched data transmissions.

Beyond being expensive, this concept also proved to be confusing to users of the networks. Should separate networks be used or should an integrated approach be sought? Even beyond that, those few brave souls who tried the integrated approach were destined to more confusion because of the carrier offerings being different. What the industry needed was a single way of handling all forms of traffic and one network service that could carry the different forms of traffic. The end user was looking for something that would clear up the confusion and make life simple. Hence, ATM was born.

Unfortunately, ATM can cause as much confusion as the older techniques, strictly by virtue of its name. Why is ATM called asynchronous? Wasn't it designed to run on a synchronous networking platform and support synchronous traffic? The answer is yes! One can see that confusion reigns in this industry just because of the naming conventions used to describe the various...