An Overview of Network Architecture and security framework of Asynchronous Transfer Mode

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) has emerged as most promising technology in supporting broadband multimedia communications. Congestion control plays important role in the effective and stable operation of ATM networks. The management of these networks creates new challenges for both private network operators and public telecommunications service provider communities due to the heterogeneous mix of ATM Switch equipment, and the need to establish, control and monitor end-to-end connections (virtual circuits) through a network. ATM is a standard for carriage of a complete range of user traffic, including voice, data, and video signals. It is designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing and it encodes data into small, fixedsized cells. ATM provides data link layer services that run over a wide range of OSI physical Layer links. ATM has functional similarity with both circuit switched networking and small packet switched networking. It was designed for a network that must handle both traditional high-throughput data traffic (e.g., file transfers), and real-time, low-latency content such as voice and video.