asynchronous transfer mode

noun

: a digital network communications system that allows high-speed broadband transmissions

The overhaul of AT&T's network is just as important. AT&T will deploy an Internet-like digital technology known as ATM, for asynchronous transfer mode. It converts information into the ones and zeros of computer language, breaks it into tiny pieces, stamps them with an address and sends them into a shared transmission line.

—Steve Rosenbush

—abbreviation ATM

Examples of asynchronous transfer mode in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

For example, one of his graduate students studied packet errors and discovered that checksums, which are used to detect corruption in the header of IPv4 packets, are bad at detecting certain kinds of errors that are likely to occur over asynchronous transfer mode. —IEEE Spectrum, 21 Oct. 2022

Word History

First Known Use

1984, in the meaning defined above