MAN: Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

Most of the networking technologies discussed so far have carried computer-type data well and provide a reliable connection between two nodes. Unfortunately they are not as good at carrying real-time sampled data, such as digitized video or speech. Real-time data from speech and video requires constant sampling and these digitized samples must propagate through the network with the minimum of delay. Any significant delay in transmission can cause the recovered signal to be severely distorted or for the connection to be lost. Ethernet, token ring and FDDI simply send the data into the network without first determining if there is a communication channel for the data to be transported.