Some Obstacles on the Road to ATM

Abstract

The introduction of ATM will take place in the local environment first. ATM will make very high speed LANs a reality. These future LANs will be based on switches, unlike their low speed predecessors which used shared media. ATM technology will contribute to making the distinctions between LANs, MANs and WANs eventually disappear. ATM will also be the transport mechanism of choice for multimedia. However there are some alternatives to ATM. One of them is FCS which can play the role of a very high speed LAN and is positioned with respect to ATM in this paper. When it is realized, the vision of a “world wired with fibers” where the videophones have replaced the conventional telephone sets and where videoconferencing are part of the normal working environment, will draw heavily upon ATM. We are discussing some of the significant problems which remain to be solved such as the distributed support of video-conferencing. The likely rollout of ATM products and the different approaches considered to address these problems are addressed here.