Frame Relay
Private frame relay networks can reduce the number of communications circuits, thus reducing costs, necessary to support applications over a wide area network. Frame relay can also improve performance, and response times of your most demanding applications by providing a common network transport that supports multiprotocol networking.

In the original SNA realm, WAN connections were mainly dedicated data links which handled only SNA and SDLC. Now, frame relay supports a mix of protocols-allowing you wider variety of applications and ease of network integration.

If you would like to learn more about Frame Relay you can check out our FAQ.

ACI, Inc. Frame Relay FAQ

ATM
Short for Asynchronous Transfer Mode, a network technology based on transferring data in cells or packets of a fixed size. The cell used with ATM is relatively small compared to units used with older technologies. The small (53 byte), constant cell size allows ATM equipment to transmit video, audio, and computer data over the same network, and assure that no single type of data hogs the line.

Current implementations of ATM support data transfer rates of from 25 to 622 Mbps (megabits per second) for common uses. Speeds on ATM networks can reach 10 Gbps (gigabits per second.)This compares to a maximum of 100 Mbps for Ethernet, the current technology used for most LANs.

Some people think that ATM holds the answer to the Internet bandwidth problem, but others are skeptical. ATM creates a fixed channel, or route, between two points whenever data transfer begins. This differs from TCP/IP, in which messages are divided into packets and each packet can take a different route from source to destination. This difference makes it easier to track and bill data usage across an ATM network, but it makes it less adaptable to sudden surges in network traffic.