Michael JasonSmith wrote:
While I am thinking of things that became popular because they are free, think of the Internet, which is only successful because anyone can implement the standards, suggest new standards, or alter the existing ones. ATM, which was designed to perform the same task as the Internet Protocol stack, was no where near as popular because it was not free.
Linux has good support for ATM - I'm using it right now - and IP was already popular when ATM was invented in 1989, so I don't think that's quite accurate. Its designers probably didn't think it would be relegated to the link layer of home Internet connections though.
I think ATM's lack of popularity is more because its 53 byte packets are too small for today's network hardware, because it's no good for LANs, and because IP makes it easy to upgrade to whichever link layer works best as new technologies are developed.
-- "A story, I decided, is anything that keeps http://carey.geek.nz/ the people reading turning the pages, and doesn't leave them feeling cheated at the end. Everything else was up for grabs." -- Neil Gaiman
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