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Seamless Transmission
Asynchronous Transfer Mode will revolutionize the way data is transmitted

In looking back at the past few months of technology columns for The Lane Report, I was struck by the veritable mishmash of acronyms that are connected in various ways with technology issues. I've used ISDN, BISDN, RBOC, ADSL, PCS, RAM, CD-ROM, NC, PCN, IT, AT&T, HTML, and GTE, as well as others I won't list. It's enough to make even acronym-ridden government agencies look like relative bush-leaguers. Once in a rut, however, it's hard to extricate oneself, and this month I find myself on another topic with a acronym designation.

Most folks, when they speak of an ATM, have something in mind that will deliver dollars when primed with a bankcard. Personally, I still refer to Automated Teller Machines as Moneytrees, which is a holdover from the days when I was a customer of the old Bank of Lexington. That was before I changed banks three times without ever doing anything myself -- they did it. Now they don't call them Moneytrees anymore, but I still do. However, I digress. The ATM to which this column refers stands for Asynchronous Transfer Mode, and it is a truly revolutionary bit of technology in a world where technology revolutions are becoming more and more commonplace. Moreover, unlike some other "technologies of the future," this one is coming to fruition.

Throughout the recent history of networking, there has been one basic dichotomy: local area networks (LANs) vs. wide area networks (WANs). Not only have transmission speeds over LANs been much faster than transmission speeds over WANs, the two types of networks employ different standards and protocols. To further complicate matters, different types of networks have been required to handle different types of information, such as voice, video, and data. This variety is due to the fact that each of these types of information have different transmission characteristics.

Data traffic, for instance (imagine e-mail as a very simple example), tends to be what we call "bursty." The network may not be required for lengthy periods of time and then may be called on for heavy traffic. Additionally, data is more often than not transmitted in "packets," which may travel different routes and arrive at their destinations out of sequence, only to be reassembled as a final step in the transmission. Voice and video information, on the other hand, typically requires a dedicated circuit and is very sensitive indeed to when and in what order it arrives.

ATM has been in development throughout most of this decade as the only standards-based technology that will allow simultaneous transmission of voice, data, and video over the same circuit. Additionally, ATM is not medium specific, and will work with fiber optic cable, coax, and twisted-pair wire. The end result of the eventual widespread deployment of ATM will be to erase the distinctions between LANs and WANs, so that a seamless, fast network running on one standard will finally be achieved. This is not to say that other technologies and protocols will be eliminated through competition with ATM. As a matter of fact, the implementation of previous topics of this column, such as Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network (BISDN) and Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) will be made possible because they will run over ATM networks.

The University of Kentucky is in the process of upgrading its campus backbone network from a Fiber Distributed Digital Interface (FDDI) ring to ATM. Network speeds on the campus will accelerate to a phenomenal 622 megabits per second (a T1 line runs at 1.54 mbps). When these kinds of transmission speeds are achieved on a widespread basis, our world will have experienced yet another significant technological revolution.