ATM and Cell Relay

Asynchronous Transfer Mode, or ATM, lately has been heralded as the "Holy Grail" of high-speed networking.  Having worked hands-on with the design and implementation of high-speed networks, especially with alot of ATM, I would suggest that ATM is a fnatastic technology for WAN and MAN backbones, as well as for LAN backbones that need to deliver guaranteed services and/or multiple types of service (ie, multimedia).  ATM even has a place in delivery to the user desktop in extremely specific circumstances.  However, for traditional Local Area Network campus and distribution backbones,  the decision to deploy and ATM network vs. other less-esoteric technologies such as fast ethernet or FDDI, needs to be carefully analyzed.  Just MYHO.  You do the research and decide what is appropriate in your case.

A high-level representation of an ATM network I have designed and built.
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