Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) All this buttoning and unbuttoning 18th century suicide note The history of telecommunications is basically a history of technology. Advances in technology have led to new networks, each new network offering a range of new services to the user. The result is that we now have a wide range of networks supporting different services. We have the telex network, the telephone network, the ISDN, packet-switched data networks, circuit-switched data networks, mobile telephone networks, the leased line network, local area networks, metropolitan area networks, and so on | Total Area Networking ATM IP Frame Relay and SMDS Explained. Second Edition John Atkins and Mark Norris Copyright 1995 1999 John Wiley Sons Ltd Print ISBN 0-471-98464-7 Online ISBN 0-470-84153-2 5 Asynchronous Transfer Mode ATM All this buttoning and unbuttoning 18th century suicide note The history of telecommunications is basically a history of technology. Advances in technology have led to new networks each new network offering a range of new services to the user. The result is that we now have a wide range of networks supporting different services. We have the telex network the telephone network the ISDN packet-switched data networks circuit-switched data networks mobile telephone networks the leased line network local area networks metropolitan area networks and so on. More recently we have seen the introduction of networks to support Frame Relay and SMDS services. The problem is that the increasing pace of developments in applications threatens to make new networks obsolete before they can produce a financial return on the investment. To avoid this problem it has long been the telecommunications engineer s dream to develop a universal network capable of supporting the complete range of services including of course those that have not yet been thought of. The key to this is a switching fabric flexible enough to cater for virtually any service requirements. ATM is considered by many to be as close to this as we are likely to get in the foreseeable future. This chapter explains the basic ideas of ATM how it can carry different services in a unified way and how it will provide seamless networking over both the local and wide areas . Total Area Networking. Section gives a general overview of the key features of ATM with an explanation of the underlying principles. Section puts a bit more flesh on the skeleton. Section looks at how SMDS and Frame Relay are carried over an ATM network and section looks briefly at ATM in local area networks. 92 .
