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ATM is short for Asynchronous Transfer Mode. It is a telecommunications network switching technology that employs asynchronous time-division multiplexing to pack data into tiny, fixed-sized cells.
It encodes data appropriately for TDM and sends them via physical media. ATM is the primary protocol used on the Integrated Digital Services Network's (ISDN) backbone Synchronous Optical Network (SONET). ATM networks are cell relay connection-oriented networks that enable voice, video, and data communications.
ATM transmits data in the form of fixed-size units known as cells. Each cell is 53-bytes long, including a 5-byte header and a 48-byte payload. ATM is available in two formats, which are as follows:
There are three layers of ATM which are as follows:
Its purpose is to isolate higher-layer protocols from ATM operations' intricacies and prepare user data for conversion into cells and segmentation into 48-byte cell payloads. The AAL protocol excludes transmission from upper-layer services and assists them in mapping applications, such as voice and data, to ATM cells.
This layer corresponds to the OSI model's physical layer. The cells are transformed into bitstreams and sent via the physical media at this layer. It is divided into two sublayers: Physical Medium Dependent (PMD) and Transmission Convergence (TC).
It is responsible for simultaneously sharing virtual circuits across the physical connection of cell multiplexing and transmitting cells over an ATM network known as cell relay. The VPI and VCI data in the cell header are used.
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For a better understanding, consider the following ATM applications:
It tends to make better use of SONET/SDH fibre networks by constructing ATM infrastructure to transmit telephonic and private-line traffic.
ATM network is scalable in both size and strength. They offer dynamic bandwidth, which is ideal for huge traffic. Since the data is encoded into identical cells, its transmission is easy, consistent, and predictable. Here are the top reasons why it is needed in a computer network:
Listed below are the advantages of ATMs:
Here, you'll find the basic difference between ATMs and data networks (internet).
Basis | ATM | Data Network |
---|---|---|
Meaning | ATM is a switching mechanism used by telecommunication networks that encodes data into tiny, fixed-sized cells using asynchronous time-division multiplexing | A data network is a system that uses data switching, transmission lines, and system controls to send data from one network access point to another or more network access points |
Based On | ATM is based on "virtual circuits," which means that the path is reserved before transmission | Internet Protocol (IP) is connectionless and does not allow end-to-end resource reservations. RSVP is a new internet signalling protocol |
Cell Size | ATM cells are fixed or tiny in size, with a tradeoff between voice and data | IP packets are varied in size |
Address | ATM signals with 20-byte global NSAP addresses and 32-bit locally allocated labels in cells | IP employs 32-bit global addresses in all packets |
ATM is a connection-oriented protocol that could function with either Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVCs) or Switched Virtual Circuits (SVCs), depending on your WAN traffic requirements. ATM networks employ bandwidth efficiently while providing assured Quality of Service (QoS) to customers and applications that demand it. The key advantages are its fast transmission speeds and flexible bandwidth-on-demand flexibility.