Asynchronous Transfer

Mode
 Agenda
• Introduction • Switching
• Design Goals • Physical Connections
• Problems Solved • Layers (Reference
Model)
• Structure
• Addressing
• Cell • LAN
• Devices • Advantages
• Virtual Connections • Disadvantages
• Identification of Path • References
• Services
Intro…
ATM is
• Connection oriented switching
technology
• Handles digital data format
• Consist upon 53-byte cells (Individually, a
cell is processed asynchronously relative to other related
cells and is queued before being multiplexed over the
transmission path.)
• Prespecified bit rates are either
155.520 Mbps or 622.080 Mbps.
• Speeds on ATM networks can reach
10 Gbps.
Intro…
• Basically Asynchronous Transfer
Mode (ATM) is the cell relay
protocol designed by the ATM
Forum and adopted by the ITU-T.
• In fact, ATM can be thought of as
the "highway" of the information
superhighway.
 Design Goals
• Want to be
– Higher data rate or bandwidth
– Wide area connectivity without
lowering the effectiveness
– Implemented Inexpensively
– Compatible to most of telecom
hierarchies
– Connection Oriented
– Converting from soft to hardware.
Structure or Architecture…
• ATM is a cell-switched network.
• The user access devices, called the
endpoints, are connected through
a user-to-network interface (UNI)
to the switches inside the network.
• The switches are connected
through network-to-network
interfaces (NNIs).
 ATM Cell
• ATM transfers information in fixed-
size units called cells.
• Each cell consists of 53 octets, or
bytes. The first 5 bytes contain
cell-header information (contain the
information about the ATM network), and other
48 contain the payload (user
information).
 ATM Devices
• ATM Switches: An ATM switch is
responsible for cell transit through an ATM
network. It can reads and updates the cell
header information and quickly switches the
cell to an output interface toward its
destination.
• ATM Endpoints: An ATM endpoint (or end
system) contains an ATM network interface
adapter.
 Virtual Connection
• Connection between two endpoints
is accomplished through
transmission paths (TPs), virtual
paths (VPs), and virtual circuits
(VCs).
• A transmission path (TP) 
Physical connection (wire, cable, satellite,
and so on) between an endpoint and a
switch or between two switches.
Virtual Connection
• A virtual path (VP) provides a
connection or a set of connections
between two switches.
• Cell networks are based on virtual
circuits (VCs). All cells belonging to
a single message follow the same
virtual circuit and remain in their
original order until they reach their
destination.
Simple
relationship
of TP, VP and
VC.

Practical
relationship
of VP and
VC.
 Identifications for paths
• The designers of ATM created a
hierarchical identifier with two
levels: a virtual path identifier (VPI)
“For specific VP” and a virtual-circuit
identifier (VCI) “For particular VC in side the
VP”.

Define the identifiers in

pairs as one is VPI and
other is VCI.
Identification (Contd…)
• For UNI and NNI we use identifiers
of different length as shown in
figure.
 ATM services
• Two types of services are 1) PVC and 2)
SVC
• PVC: Permanent Virtual Circuits allows
direct connectivity between sites. In this
way, a PVC is similar to a leased line.
• SVC: Switched Virtual Circuits is
created and released dynamically and
remains in use only as long as data is
being transferred. In this sense, it is
similar to a telephone call.
 ATM Switching
• ATM uses switches to route the cell
from a source endpoint to the
destination endpoint.
• A switch routes the cell using both
the VPIs and the VCIs.
ATM Layers (Reference Model)
ATM consist upon three basic layer
format as
»Physical Layer
»ATM Layer
»AAL (ATM Application
Adapter Layer)
ATM Reference Model
• Physical layer—Analogous to the physical layer of the OSI
reference model, the ATM physical layer manages the medium-
dependent transmission.
• ATM layer—Combined with the ATM adaptation layer, the ATM
layer is roughly analogous to the data link layer of the OSI
reference model. The ATM layer is responsible for
– the simultaneous sharing of virtual circuits over a physical link (cell
multiplexing) and passing cells through the ATM network (cell relay).
– To do this, it uses the VPI and VCI information in the header of each
ATM cell.
– Also use to interface between physical and adaption layer.
• ATM adaptation layer (AAL)—Combined with the ATM layer,
the AAL is roughly analogous to the data link layer of the OSI
model. The AAL is responsible for
– isolating higher-layer protocols from the details of the ATM processes.
– The adaptation layer prepares user data for conversion into cells and
segments the data into 48-byte cell payloads.
ATM reference model
ATM Physical Connections
• ATM supports two types of connections:
point-to-point and point-to-multipoint.
• Point-to-point connects two ATM end
systems and can be unidirectional (one-
way communication) or bidirectional
(two-way communication).
• Point-to-multipoint connects a single-
source end system (known as the root
node) to multiple destination end
systems (known as leaves). Such
connections are unidirectional only.
Advantages
• ATM supports voice, video and data allowing
multimedia and mixed services over a single
network.
• High evolution potential, works with existing
technologies
• Provides the best multiple service support
• Ability to connect LAN to WAN
• High speed Mbps and possibly Gbps
Disadvantages
• Flexible to efficiency’s expense, at present, for
any one application it is usually possible to
find a more optimized technology
• Cost, although it will decrease with time
• New customer premises hardware and
software are required
• Competition from other technologies -100
Mbps FDDI, 100 Mbps Ethernet and fast
Ethernet.
for obsession