Warrendale, California-headquartered Fore Systems Inc has announced ForeThought Asynchronous Transfer Mode application programming interfaces, claimed to be the first industry-standard programming interfaces for ATM developers. Incorporating the Win Sock 2.0 and the X/Open Co Ltd XTI specifications, they are said to enable developers to program directly to the ATM protocol stack. This means, according to the company, that time-sensitive applications such as video-conferencing and video on demand can be guaranteed a specified amount of bandwidth, receiving priority over less delay-sensitive traffic, such as bursty data. The first of the two will be the ForeThought WinSock 2.0 ATM application programming interface for creating native applications for Windows environments, due early next year. The X/Open XTI is aimed at developers for the Macintosh, Irix and Solaris, and will follow by mid-year.
