Providing native ATM support should help lower the cost of implementing ATM networks. Currently, the adapter vendor has to provide the signaling code and the LAN Emulation code to accommodate transports. When Microsoft provides ATM support at the operating system level, including the call manager and LAN Emulation client, vendors will be freed from the expense of either developing or licensing the complex signaling code.
Native ATM support will also help guarantee robustness, because the vendor has to write only a small amount of code. And as noted earlier, Microsoft native ATM support will expose APIs in kernel mode (through NDIS 4.1) and user mode (through WinSock 2.0), making it easier to write QoS applications.