Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is a switching technique used by telecommunication networks that uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing to encode data into small, fixed-sized cells. This is different from Ethernet or the Internet, which use variable packet sizes for data or frames. ATM is the core protocol used over the synchronous optical network (SONET) backbone of the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN).