1.

Who uses ATM/ Networks that support traditional high-throughput data traffic You might say to yourself that Asynchronous Transfer Mode sounds like a great technology, but who uses this thing? ATM is a technology that will enable carriers to capitalize on a number of revenue opportunities through multiple ATM classes of services; high-speed local-area network (LAN) interconnection; voice, video, and future multimedia applications in business markets in the short term; and in community and residential markets in the longer term. (http://www.telecomspace.com/vop-atm.html) Asyncronous transfer mode is a service applied in a wide range of services. Some of these services are workgroups with campus networks, enterprise network consolidation, multimedia virtual private networks, and for internet backbones for internet service providers. All of these are networks that support traditional high throughput data traffic.

2. Low-latency transfers such as real-time audio/video Asyncronous transfer mode has the benefit of providing low latency transfers. These low Latency transfer were great for providing audio, video, and VoIP(voice over internet provider). Many companies provide these services as one big package. One such company is Digizip ATM service. Digizips ATM service slogan is Carry your data, video, voice, and Internet needs on a single network. They go on to explain to their customers how great, easy, and reliable it is to carry voice over their data network. They also explained how ATM overs REAL TIME video conferencing, and full motion medical imaging for large financial business transaction or just to

provide higher resolution graphics to transport on a network. Digizip did not even market the benefits that ATM has on a high speed local area network (LAN)

3.high-speed local-area network (LAN)/ future multimedia applications in business market Asyncronous transfer mode offers high speed local area networking. As previously discussed some examples of these high speed local area networks are enterprise networks, and multimedia virtual private networks. In the enterprise network it is described as a full featured ATM ENS. It is described that this can be used as an in-building solution to offer voice, and video throughout a building structure in a local area. This is used in some stadium structures and corporate buildings to update things in video units for example the current weather for the week, the companys current market share and also top news in the company throughout the building all under one network thats easily manageable. While in the multimedia virtual private networks Service providers are Building on their ATM networks to offer a broad range of services. Examples include managed ATM, LAN, voice and video services (these being provided on a per-application basis, typically including customer-located equipment and offered on an end-toend basis), and full-service virtual private networking capabilities (these including integrated multimedia access and network management).

What layer of the OSI model ATM works with

The Asyncronous transfer mode works on a specific layer on the OSI model. The asynchronous transfer mode works on the physical layer. You can also say that its functionality corresponds on parts of the data link layer on the OSI reference model.( http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode_Switching). On the reference model the ATM has three different plans. The first plane is called Control. The control plane is responsible for creating and managing signal requests. The next plane is the user plane. On this plan it is used to manage the transferring of the data. And the last plane is the management plane. On the management plane it is comprised of two components. (Layer management & Plane management). In the layer management plane it is used for the detection of failures and protocol problems. In the plane management layer it coordinates the different functions in relation to the complete system. All three of these planes are used on both the physical and data link layer on the OSI model. The ATM physical layer has four functions: Cells are converted into a bitstream, the transmission and receipt of bits on the physical medium are controlled, ATM cell boundaries are tracked, and cells are packaged into the appropriate types of frames for the physical medium. For example, cells are packaged differently for SONET than for DS-3/E-3 media types. .( http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode_Switching) Below I have included a picture of the OSI model and how the ATM uses the different layers along with its

three planes.

How it differs from Ethernet data link technology

Asyncronous transfer mode although also a networking tool it differs a lot from the Ethernet data link technology. One difference is that ATM uses no routing. Hardware devices known as ATM switches establish point-to-point connections between endpoints and data flows directly from source to destination. Additionally, instead of using variable-length packets as Ethernet does, ATM utilizes fixed-sized cells. ATM cells are 53 bytes in length, that includes 48 bytes of data and five (5) bytes of header information. (http://compnetworking.about.com/od/networkprotocols /g/bldef_atm.htm). In comparison in terms of performance ATM is a much faster and reliable solution than Ethernet. ATM technology is designed to improve utilization and the quality of the service on high-traffic networks. Without routing and with fixed-size cells, networks can much more easily manage bandwidth under ATM than under the Ethernet system.