It could work in the LAN and WAN, and PNNI seemed like a method for growing some huge manageable networks. It could do voice, video and data with traffic management. It addressed a slew of problems that were popping up in the early part of this decade. But just like Mike Tyson taking a chunk out of Evander Holyfield's ear, the spectacle was more memorable than the fight. No desktop ATM technology really made it, except perhaps at 155 Mbps, and the cost of those connections still rivals the cost of a typical business desktop computer.
Ethernet is cheap, pervasive and functional.
This chapter on ATM has closed. It appears, however, that yet another chapter is closing as well. We wanted one of the high-speed Ethernet startups and one of the ATM powerhouses to submit their technologies. The idea was to test them both to see where each technology stood out. We weren't talking about ATM to the desktop.