ATM Advantages

1)ATM supports voice, video and data allowing multimedia and mixed services over a
single network.

2)High evolutionary potential, works with existing, legacy technologies

3)Provides the best multiple service support

4)Supports delay close to that of dedicated services 5)Supports the broadest range
of burstiness, delay 6)tolerance and loss performance through the implementation of
multiple QoS classes

7)Provides the capability to support both connection-oriented and connectionless

traffic using AALs

8)Able to use all common physical transmission paths like SONET.

9)Cable can be twisted-pair, coaxial or fiber-optic

10)Ability to connect LAN to WAN

11)Legacy LAN emulation

12)Efficient bandwidth use by statistical multiplexing

13)Scalability

14)Higher aggregate bandwidth

15)High speed Mbps and possibly Gbps

ATM disadvantages

1)Flexible to efficiency�s expense, at present, for any one application it is

usually possible to find a more optimized technology

2)Cost, although it will decrease with time

3)New customer premises hardware and software are required

4)Competition from other technologies -100 Mbps FDDI, 100 Mbps Ethernet and fast
Ethernet

5)Presently the applications that can benefit from ATM such as multimedia are rare

6)The wait, with all the promise of ATM�s capabilities many details are still in
the standards process