Difference Between ATM, LAN, WAN?

Question

Difference Between ATM, LAN, WAN?

Answer 1

ATM - a technology used over WANs

WAN - links LANs over a wide geographic area

LAN - a local network generally confined to a single building or

           sometimes several buildings within close proximity

Answer 2

ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is a network protocol that uses cells instead of packets.  These cells are fixed length (as opposed to variable length of packets) and have a small header.  The advantage of cell based networks is that there is very low latency and reduced jitter since cells are typically much smaller than packets and they are easier to transfer across a switch fabric since they are fixed length.  ATM was used primarily for voice and video applications in both WANs and LANs.  ATM networks had VLAN concepts before VLANs were implemented on ethernet networks.  ATM is much closer related to current telephone switching than today's data networks.

LAN (Local Area Network) is a term used to define a network of machines at a single location.  "LAN" is also used to refer to individual subnets sometimes.  Ethernet is the current king of LAN but other examples include IPX, appletalk, fddi, and token ring.

WAN (Wide Area Networks) is a term used to define a network across long distances (typically > 50mi).  These are typically over serial or some sort of fiber physical link.  Some WAN protocols include X.25, frame relay, and ATM.  Some classify DSL and ISDN as wan technologies but that is arguable since these are provisioning protocols that brings connections to a location from the remote terminal or switch rather than between LANs separated by very long distances.

Answer 3

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

Local Area Network

Wide Area Network

Answer 4

Traditional local area networks, such as Ethernet and Token Ring, use a connectionless, unreliable approach when sending information across the network. Likewise, TCP/IP data transfers between networks are connectionless and unreliable. These traditional approaches are very different from that employed by ATM, which is a connection-oriented, circuit-based technology. The following section describes the differences between these two approaches to networking.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtec...