Traffic management for ATM local area networks

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is the first switching technology to be capable of supporting circuit switching and packet switching within a single integrated switching mechanism. This was one of the research goals that led to the development of ATM. Considerable progress has already been made in implementing constant bit-rate services, similar to conventional circuit switching, over ATM. The authors briefly consider how to support LAN emulation over an ATM network and then explore how to offer the dynamic bandwidth sharing in the local area. Considerable progress has already been made in implementing constant bit-rate services, similar to conventional circuit switching, over ATM. However, the bursty nature of data traffic requires dynamic bandwidth sharing similar to packet switching, and this is still under investigation