According to a report in the Networld+InterOp Show Daily produced by Communications Week, the Switched Multimegabit Data Service Special Interest Group has approved a specification designed to enable users to run SMDS traffic over Asynchronous Transfer Mode user-to-network interfaces. ADC Kentrox Inc and Digital Link Corp are said to have already developed products based on preliminary versions of the new specification. The report also notes that the next item on the Special Interest Group’s list of tasks is the definition of a method for translating Switched Multi-Megabit cells to Asynchronous Transfer Mode cells: the aim of this is to enable users to combine the advantages of connectionless SMDS services with the guaranteed bandwidth that is provided by Asynchronous Transfer Mode. The ATM Forum is said to have endorsed the specification, while a similar spec for running Frame Relay traffic over Asynchronous Transfer Mode is said to be under development by the Frame Relay Forum.
