Solved: is ATM a lan technology?

sarahr202 · ‎05-28-2009

hi every body!

My book says" Historically speaking, several competing LAN standards existed,including Token ring, FFDI and ATM. Eventually ,ethernet won out over all the competing LAN standards"

Is ATM a LAN technology?

I always thought it was Wan.

thanks and have a nice day!

Richard Burts · ‎05-28-2009

I would agree that ATM is primarily a WAN technology. But there was an implementation of LAN emulation for ATM (you could search for LANE) which allowed devices connected via ATM to operate as if they were on a shared media Ethernet environment. So it is legitimate to refer to ATM as a competing LAN standard.

HTH

Rick

HTH

Rick

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Giuseppe Larosa · ‎05-28-2009

Hello Sarah,

there was a moment that ATM was proposed up to the desktop.

ATM world include ATM LANE (LAN Emulation) and this is actually a technology that could be seen as a LAN / pseudo LAN.

We can say LANE is a way to interconnect LAN switches using ATM links used as uplinks.

Hope to help

Giuseppe

View solution in original post

Richard Burts · ‎05-28-2009

I would agree that ATM is primarily a WAN technology. But there was an implementation of LAN emulation for ATM (you could search for LANE) which allowed devices connected via ATM to operate as if they were on a shared media Ethernet environment. So it is legitimate to refer to ATM as a competing LAN standard.

HTH

Rick

HTH

Rick

Giuseppe Larosa · ‎05-28-2009

Hello Sarah,

there was a moment that ATM was proposed up to the desktop.

ATM world include ATM LANE (LAN Emulation) and this is actually a technology that could be seen as a LAN / pseudo LAN.

We can say LANE is a way to interconnect LAN switches using ATM links used as uplinks.

Hope to help

Giuseppe

sarahr202 · ‎05-28-2009

Thanks GIuseppe and Rick for awesome response.

CriscoSystems · ‎05-28-2009

And for whatever this is worth, Sarah, I once knew a gooficus who knew that "there was once some other LAN thingy that started with 'A'" and satisfied himself that it was ATM.

What he was _actually_ thinking of was ARC.

Gooficus.

Jon Marshall · ‎05-28-2009

Sarah

Just out of interest.

Way back when i was a unix admin we needed to upgrade our network to faster that 100Mbs. At the time Gigabit ethernet had not been ratified so the company chose ATM LANE.

Basically we had 155Mbps to the desktop and the 622Mbps across the backbone. It worked but it was very difficult to troubleshoot. ATM did indeed have to the capability to emulate a LAN but it was still very much like a managed WAN in that packets went into the ATM LAN and popped out the other end but you were never quite sure what was going on inside :-).

Thankfully ethernet is the LAN standard these days.

Jon