ATM vs. IP from a neutral standpoint

Although there has been considerable debate about the pros and cons of both ATM and IP networks, most of these arguments have been somewhat qualitative and have very often been influence by implementation issues. Very little research effort has been focused on a quantitative comparison of the fundamental differences between the two types of network. This paper address the question of ATM v IP by first considering the characteristic and quality of service (QoS) requirements of the types of traffic that may be generated by future distributed multimedia applications. From this it identifies three general classes of network level service that are needed to meet all of these requirements. This is followed by a discussion that outlines the main arguments in favour of both ATM and IP. It concludes by relating these arguments to the service requirements of multimedia traffic, followed by a proposal for a further investigation into the problem