Asynchronous Transfer Mode Abstract
Aynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) has been accepted universally as the transfer mode of choice for Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks(BISDN). ATM can handle any kind of information i.e. voice, data, image, text and video in an integrated manner. ATM provides a good bandwidth flexibility and can be used efficiently from desktop computers to local area and wide area networks. ATM is a connection- oriented packet switching technique in which all packets are of fixed length i.e. 53 bytes(5 bytes for header and 48 bytes for information). The header is used to identify cells belonging to the same virtual channel and thus used in appropriate routing. Cell sequence integrity is preserved per virtual channel. ATM Adaptation layers(AAL) are used to support various services and provide service specific functions. This AAL specific information is contained in the information field of the ATM cell. The ATM adaptation layers are: •
AAL Type 1 --- constant bit rate services
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AAL Type 2 --- variable bit rate services
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AAL Type 3/4 --- connectionless services/data protocols
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AAL Type 5 --- high-speed data protocol
No processing like error control is done on the information field of ATM cells inside the network and it is carried transparently in the network.
ATM meets the following objectives for BISDN networks. 1) Supports all existing services as well as emerging services in the future 2) utilizes network resources very efficiently 3)minimizes the switching complexity 4)minimizes the processing time at the intermediate nodes and supports very high transmission speeds. 5)minimizes the number of buffers required at the intermediate nodes to bound the
delay and the complexity of buffer management 6)guarantees performance requirements of existing and emerging applications.
In our paper we have discussed the important features as well as advantages of atm over other technologies.
Snigdha Bhardwaj 5th semester Computer Science and Engineering email:
[email protected] KOsha Shah 5th semester electronics email:
[email protected]