| | Definition: | | ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is a switching/transmission technique where data is transmitted in small, fixed sized cells (5 byte header, 48 byte payload). The cells lend themselves both to the time-division- multiplexing characteristics of the transmission media, and the packet switching characteristics desired of data networks. At each switching node, the ATM header identifies a virtual path or virtual circuit that the cell contains data for, enabling the switch to forward the cell to the correct next-hop trunk. The virtual path is set up through the involved switches when two endpoints wish to communicate. This type of switching can be implemented in hardware, almost essential when trunk speed range from 45Mb/s to 1Gb/s. |
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