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To this day I think ATM was an interesting approach. Virtual circuit switching with quality of service capabilities designed into the protocol. If nothing else,
by johngalt 4y ago
To this day I think ATM was an interesting approach. Virtual circuit switching with quality of service capabilities designed into the protocol. If nothing else, it is a great example of a complex and optimized protocol losing vs a ubiquitous and simple protocol.
- kstrauser 4y agoIt was "interesting", all right. For instance, its packet payloads were 48 bytes long. Why? Because 32 was too short for large streams (with a 5 byte header representing a 13% overhead), and 64 was "too long" (!!!) for real-time voice connections. The virtual circuit stuff looked very attractive if you worked for Ma Bell and wanted to charge by the connection, but thankfully lost out to packet-switched networking.
- Spooky23 4y agoThe hardware was garbage too. I ripped that crap out of a place that went all in with some IBM/Lucent ATM solution. I remember they would have a failure a couple of times a week where some switches would freeze up. Someone would send an alert and a data center operator would plug a null modem cable into the switch and remove it. That would un-fubar the switch.