ATM Forum strengthening global position.

The ATM Forum is undertaking a transformation in order to solidify its mass-market position and become a pre-eminent carrier technology. IPover ATM, Voice over DSL, H.323, and new testing concepts are a few of the leading work items being addressed within the ATM Forum. Established in 1991, the ATM Forum is a nonprofit international organization of about 550 companies representing all sectors of the computer and communication industries, as well as government agencies, research organizations, and end users. The work of the ATM Forum and its technical committee reflects a renewed commitment to unite industry players on key technological issues. ATM remains the only proven technology capable of ensuring QoS for the various types of traffic flowing through the global internetworking infrastructure.

* IP-over-ATM working group

With an increased external focus and an emphasis on industry-wide cooperation, the technical committee has decided to create a new working group. Recognizing the importance of partnering with other technologies, members have chosen to redirect efforts toward improving the performance of ATM in support of IP-based services. IP over ATM provides a transition path to the deployment of ATM enterprise and end-user networks.

* ATM transport technology for VoDSL

Another technical working group--VTOA (voice and telephony overATM) --demonstrated a commitment to aid in developing voice over DSL (VoDSL) technology, which enables voice and data integration. Industry players look to VoDSL to fill the gap in telecommunications services currently existing in the small to midsized business markets. "VoDSL is an important incremental step and work item within the ATM Forum. On this path to providing an application that consumers are looking for, we are enabling a true mass-market technology by tying desktop PC operating systems to the telephone/ data network," says Rick Townsend, worldwide technical committee chair of the ATM Forum. "A significant amount of time and energy will continue to be devoted to the technical and marketing issues surrounding the rapid deployment of voice services within the access network this year."

* ATM to work with ITU H.323

A key focus of the technical committee's RMOA (Real-time Multimedia overATM) Working Group has been the establishment of ATM within the ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication Sector) H.323 series of specifications, an umbrella specification designed for network/IP compatibility. H.323 specifies protocols for real-time communication over packet-based networks. This will enable the use of ATM technology within the emerging multimedia market by adding QoS and security to increase the versatility of the application architecture in WANs and LANs.

* New concepts for testing ATM

The ATM performance testing specification is the first of its kind in the industry. It enables users and developers to see how well a system operates under known conditions and covers parameters like latency, end-to-end delay, and effective throughput. "Now users can carry out useful performance measuring experiments and establish valid comparisons among various alternative ATM systems," says Townsend. "The performance test methodology is key to facilitating industry cooperation." For more information, visit www.atmforum.com.

ATM Forum

Worldwide technical committee Working groups:

Control signaling

LAN emulation/multiprotocol

Network management

Physical layer

Residential broadband

Routing addressing

Security

Service aspects and applications

Testing

Traffic management

Voice and telephony over ATM

Wireless ATM