ATM Lines Essay Example For Students

ATM Lines Essay In nature evolution occurs throughout various different things. Also evolutionoccurs in technology. Take for instance, ATM was an evolution of frame relay,and frame relay was an evolution of packet switching. Evolution happenseverywhere but in technology it happens all the time. Packet switchingtechnology breaks down messages into fixed-length pieces called packets and sentthrough a network individually. In packet switching messages are segmented intopackets of a pre determined size before they are sent. This process is calledpacketizing. The packets are normally 1000 bytes long. There is a lot of errorprotection in the packet. Packet switching networks are made to run severalalternative high-speed paths from one node to another. For instance if a nodefrom San Francisco is trying to send a message to Los Angeles and the connectionis busy or down, it will redirect its message to Denver then to Los Angeles asan alternative route. Frame relay is packet switchings next of kin. Framerelay evolved from packet switching. Instead of sending packets frame relaysends frames. A frame has a one-byte header, two addressing and controlbytes, a variable-length data field (1-64000 bytes), a 16-bit cyclic redundancycheck, and a termination byte. Tcom book. In frame relay, there is hardware,on both ends of the connection that builds and breaks down frames. They do thisthrough all kinds of data streams, LAN packets, digital voice, and asynchronousterminal input and the hardware writes the frames serially. The reason framerelay is more popular and better evolved than packet switching is that it usescommonly available circuits, which provides good throughput, and has low latencyand is easy to configure. Packet switching is only good for data transferringand is sent through one type of line. Frame relay sends more information fasterand through multi forms of connections. This makes packet switching not thesuitable choice for ISPs. Thus leaving packet switching out of the picture inthat field of that business. Many ISPs us frame relay as a customer accesstechnology, for port aggregation and local traffic switching by ISPs is thefastest growing segment of the frame relay market. Leaving packet switching inthe dust. However frame relay is not top dog in data transfers. Another form oftransferring has evolved from frame relay, which is ATM (Asynchronous transfermode). It is also known as cell relay. This form was created to solve theproblem of delays in the transferring. It gets really annoying when you watch avideo and it keeps on skipping or stopping every few seconds. That is an idea ofa delay in data transferring. Its cells use fixed packets of 53 bytes. Thesescells can also be built and broken down like frame relay, but in a faster time.All forms of data, like voice, video, and data, can be sent through a single ATMline, at the same time (like a T3 line). A large amount of bandwidth is requiredto use ATM. However frame relay may be the more efficient way to go. Do to thefact that it cost more for ATM lines that it does for frame relay. Right nowframe relay is the efficient source of data transfer, but in the future asmultimedia features grow the need for ATM will grow with it as well. Having thebest isnt always better. It may cost more than what you want to spend. Frompacket switching to frame relay to ATM, they all evolved from each other. Takingexisting technology and improving it for the time it is needed for.