Migration of ATM into the customer network

The likely nature of the traffic which future local area networks will handle is described. Such traffic will probably consist of two distinct classes: a delay sensitive class which will require stringent service qualities and will be controlled by means of connection admission; and a congestion sensitive class which will need to be flow-controlled. Two LAN paradigms are considered: LANs based on the use of shared media; and LANs based on the use of centralized asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switches. It is shown that significant cost savings are likely to be achieved when LANs with high aggregate throughputs (greater than 1 Gb/s) are implemented using centralized ATM switches