management Asynchronous Transfer Mode: information is information involved in call set-up. This section also notes whether the cell experienced congestion. The Header Error Control field consists of error checking bits. The Header Error Control field is an 8-bit Cyclic Redundancy Code to check for single bit and some multi-bit errors. It provides error checking of the header for use by the Transmission Convergence (TC) sublayer of the Physical layer. The Virtual Path Identifier in the cell header identifies a bundle of one or more VCs(virtual channels).The Birtual Channel Identifier (VCI) in the cel header identifies a single VC on a paricular Virtual Path. The path is divided into channels. The choice of the 48 byte payload was made as a compromise to accommodate multiple forms of traffic. The two candidate payload sizes were initially 32 and 64 bytes. The size of the cell has and effect on both transmission efficiency and packetization delay. A long payload is more efficient than a small payload since, with a large payload, more data can be transmitted per cell with the same amount of overhead (header). For data transmission alone, a large payload is desirable. The longer the payload is, however, the more time is spent packaging. Certain traffic types are sensitive to time such as voice. If packaging time is too long, and the cells are not sent off quickly, the quality of the voice transmission will decrease. The 48 byte payload size was the result of a compromise that had to be reached between the 64 byte payload which would provide efficient data transfer but ...
