And he's right. You do get better than six hundred megabits per second using ATM OC-12, so let's put this between Ethernet switches. Enter 1000 Base-T, Gigabit Ethernet. ATM concedes more of the campus LAN to Gigabit Ethernet, astonishingly because it offers bandwidth at a greater scale. Many of the same analysts and pundits who pronounced Ethernet a legacy technology now openly question whether ATM is a tractable LAN technology.
Controversy makes for very good reading, and it's entertaining.
The pronouncement of the death of Ethernet was absurd and premature. The crowning of ATM as the one true and peerless interconnection technology for all networks was absurd and premature. A pronouncement of the death or even demise of ATM as a LAN solution is also absurd and premature. There is no reason to argue whether ATM will succeed or fail on the campus and the WAN simply because it must share the market with Ethernet. History suggests that no one technology will satisfy every need for all eternity.