UPLINK
Where for art thou, ATM?
Stop the
presses! The ATM Forum has finally woken up to the fact that ATM is not going to be the sole communication protocol of choice. The revered association, whose assertive strategies brought ATM technology into the mainstream in the early 1990s, has decided to change direction and focus on making ATM workable over more widely used technologies like IP, H.323, and ADSL. So, what took them so long?
Over the past year, the “demise” of ATM has been greatly exaggerated. Because of its complex
nature, ATM has only been deployed in the network backbones of the public network (for which it was originally invented). While ATM is a robust technology with plenty of benefits, the network designers’ perception of it as costly and cumbersome has kept ATM from becoming ubiquitous.
By steeping itself in the “religion” of ATM, the marketing side of this uber technology has been precluded from gaining solid ground. However, the problem with ATM has never been with its technology. The ATM
Forum is right in its premise that no other technology provides the quality of service or the ability to handle as many data types as ATM. In essence, while ATM has lost the marketing battle, it hasn’t lost the war.
I may make fun of the ATM Forum for taking so long to change its waning tune, but I really do applaud its change in philosophy. It’s hard for a group like the ATM Forum to admit that ATM really needs to interwork with IP. For many years, it’s been an ATM versus IP war
zone — a battle that hasn’t helped anyone. Now that the forum will embrace IP through it’s new working group, we can get on with the task of using the best of ATM and the best of IP. This is the way the world should be.
DSL is another promising technology that could help ATM see its usefulness in the network. With voice over DSL (VoDSL) services showing great promise according to the analysts at In-Stat, ATM can finally make its way into the consumer/business end of the market. In-Stat
predicts that VoDSL services will reach $1 billion next year (2000). The belief is that CLECs and ILECs will be the primary deployers of such services for small to medium sized businesses. In-Stat does not see VoDSL going into the home bundle for at least another two years. The ATM working group will make sure that ATM can be successfully used as a transport medium for DSL.
And then there’s H.323. The hope is to integrate the ATM Forum specification into the existing ITU H.323 recommendation
for real-time multimedia capabilities in future WANs and LANs. This is another move to keep ATM from becoming obsolete, or worse, underutilized.
Being underutilized is really the forum’s main fear. ATM has advantages that have not been taken advantage of since the hype surrounding its initial inception. The ATM Forum’s next move is to make ATM useful in a realistic network setting, as voice and data truly converge into one broadband network. The forum has its work cut out for it, and we wish
them luck.
Nicole Westmoreland
nwestmoreland@mfi.com
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