A switch in time

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), an international set of standards for high-speed data transmission, is attracting much interest. This is due to ATM's ability to transmit huge amounts of data, voice, graphics and video information simultaneously over a single network. This is made possible by dividing information into 53-byte cells, attaching an address to each cell and transmitting the cells at speeds ranging from 45 megabytes/sec. to 1.2 gigabytes/sec. However, businesses are wary of adopting the ATM standard until its capabilities have been widely proven.