ATM BASICS - Chapter 1 pps

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Chapter 1

What Is ATM

The intent of this chapter is to provide the reader with the crucial concepts

of ATM. It describes the historic background that influenced the way ATM

devices work even until today. The chapter also positions ATM as the tech￾nology that belongs to the world of telecommunication standards for more

about fourteen years already. It covers the basic idea that is actually pre￾sent behind the term ‘ATM’ without focusing on detailed and technical

descriptions.

How to describe ATM using a short definition? In very brief, ATM can be

addressed as an integrated multiplexing and packet switching technique

that supports large variety of applications and provides for incomparable

Quality of Service.

In the end of the 80’s it became obvious to anyone that a newly defined stan￾dard such as ISDN would not be able satisfy requirements from applications

envisaged for the next decade. The new wide area service called B-ISDN

(Broadband ISDN) has been proposed by the ITU-T. B-ISDN was intended

to offer video on demand, live television from many sources, CD-quality

music, LAN inter-connections, as well as high speed data transport for sci￾ence and industrial applications. As a part of B-ISDN development process,

a number of underlying technologies, capable of fulfilling these require￾ments were analyzed and tested. Finally, the ATM has been chosen as the

underlying technology that was going to make B-ISDN possible.