:- Comparison of ATM and Ethernet

FACTOR ATM ETHERNET

1. Technology  ATM is a complex  In contrast, the beauty

technology. There are of Ethernet is its
tons of standards simplicity. Only a few
covering various standards cover the
aspects of ATM [2]. whole technology.
One can imagine that The technology is
the complexity is easy to understand
pretty much due to the and deploy. This is
nature of ATM of the primary reason for
trying to be one- the popularity and
solution-fits-all, wide adoption of
technology from LAN Ethernet.
to WAN, for all data
types. The
connection-orientation
also largely
contributes to the
overall complexity,
because it requires the
existence of specific
signalling and routing
protocols. The
complexity is driven
by the powerful
capabilites in ATM,
but not all need them.
 Ethernet does define
 A great benefit for these.
ATM is that it is
independent of the
underlying transport
mechanism. ATM
does not define Media
Access Control
(MAC) mechanism
(lower part of datalink
layer, the other being
 LLC) or the physical
layer
2. Scalability One important benefit of
ATM is that ATM can be
used as both LAN and WAN
technologies. The original
idea of ATM was the concept
of spanning over
LAN/MAN/WAN, and
utilizing the same protocol
over the entire network,
eliminating the requirement
for routers and gateways.
This vision has not
materialized. Instead, of
these, the WAN has proven to
be ATM's strong suit.
"Despite the talk about
Gigabit Ethernet displacing it,
ATM continues to be a great
fit in the WAN
3. Management ATM network configuration
is rather difficult with many
arcaine parameters at the
switch and the workstation.
ATM takes time to install and
requires a bit of expertise.
This in turn directly affects
the total costs of the
technology.
4.  Price A transition to an ATM LAN
costs more than an Ethernet
upgrade.  over ATM. This is true for
5. Bandwidth
Current transfer rates of ATM Bandwidth of ethernet
are 25, 155 and 622 Mbps.
The original Ethernet was
purely a LAN technology, but
Fast Ethernet took Ethernet to
company backbones as well,
and Gigabit Ethernet is
striving itself to even bigger
backbones, over campus
areas. There has been
critizism over Ethernet of
being a technology that
cannot scale, but its
underlying transmission
scheme continues to be one
of the principal means of
transporting data for
contemporary campus
applications.
Ethernet is well-understood
and nearly plug and play.
The Ethernet family holds a
clear economic advantage
both network interface cards
and for the network
infrastructure equipment.
vaires .10 Mbps
100 Mbps - Fast ethernet
 1000 Mbps -- Gigabit
ethernet

10 Gbps -- 10 Gigabit
ethernet