Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

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Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)Arjan DurresiDepartment of Computer Science,Louisiana State University,Baton Rouge, LA 70803Email: JainDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering,Washington University in St. Louis,St. Louis, MO 63130Email: Transfer mode (ATM) is a cell-oriented switching and multiplexingtechnology that uses fixed-length (53 byte; 48 bytes of data, and 5 bytes of headerinformation) packets called cells to carry various typesof traffic, such as data,voice, video, multimedia, and so on, through multiple classes of services. ATM is a1connection-oriented technology, in which a connection is established between the twoendpoints before the actual data exchange provides a highly complex technology, with features intended for applicationsranging from global telco networks to private local area computer networks.

The reason for choosing a small size cell was mainly a result of the need to support delay-intolerant interactive voice service (e.g., phone calls) with a a small packetization delay, i.e., the time needed to fill a cell with PCM (pulse code modulation) encoded voice samples arriving at the rate of 64 Kbps.

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