Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a high-speed networking technology that uses fixed-length cells (53 bytes) to transmit data, voice, and video over a single network. It was designed in the 1980s and 1990s to provide quality of service (QoS) guarantees for real-time applications, such as video conferencing and telephony, by establishing virtual circuits. ATM operates at the data link layer (Layer 2) of the OSI model and supports various data rates, from megabits to gigabits per second.
Developers should learn about ATM to understand historical networking concepts and legacy systems, as it was widely used in telecommunications and enterprise backbones before being largely superseded by IP-based technologies. It is relevant for maintaining or migrating older infrastructure, such as in banking or government networks, and for studying QoS mechanisms that influenced modern protocols like MPLS. Knowledge of ATM can also be useful in academic or research contexts focusing on network architecture evolution.