Connectionless ATM

Connectionless ATM (CATM) is an extension of ATM that is designed to solve some of the outstanding problems with conventional implementations of ATM. This paper contains the results of the author´s research into the capabilities of the technique, possible applications and the practicality of implementation. The most important network-level connectionless protocol is currently the Internet Protocol (IP). Mapping IP onto ATM has proved to be extremely difficult and certainly current solutions are complex and overweight. The need for effective mapping of IP onto ATM is clear. CATM provides a solution to this problem. It is a form of ATM designed so that connectionless protocols (both at the link level and the network level) can be effectively mapped onto an ATM infrastructure while allowing the ATM network to support connection-orientated protocols in the normal way. The result is a true multiservice integrated network