Cell Relay Archive

[bmeindl@ixl.net (Bob Meindl)]

In article <55vc9i$9if@jusdnews.fir.fbc.com>
mfischbe@fir.fbc.com (Mike Fischbein) writes:

> ATM just isn't reliable for LAN work.  It may become
> so, but unless you want to be the test case, do
> something else.

This is simply not the case.  There are alot of variables involved that
were not discussed in the original post but ATM is extremely reliable
and being used in many mission critical networks today.  Most
conservative institutions that have deployed ATM reliably are using
Permanent Virtual Circuits and this technique is extremely reliable. 
An important consideration in using ATM is the size of the network.  It
becomes more difficult to use PVCs in a larger environment due to the
administrative overhead and at some point as a network gets larger,
Switched Virtual Circuits are deployed, usually with LANE.  LANE is
still fairly new and a little more complex than PVCs and also has the
potential to have inter-vendor interoperability problems so needs to be
deployed with more care.  Even LANE with SVCs can be deployed reliably,
however.

Bob