Switched Multi-Megabit Data Services

ALSO CALLED: MDS, SMDS, Multi-Megabit Data Services
DEFINITION: SMDS (Switched Multimegabit Data Service) is a public, packet-switched service aimed at enterprises that need to exchange large amounts of data with other enterprises over the wide-area network on a nonconstant or "bursty" basis. SMDS provides an architecture for this kind of data exchange and a set of services. In general, SMDS extends the performance and efficiencies of a company's local area  … 
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SWITCHED MULTI-MEGABIT DATA SERVICES DEFINITION (continued): …  network (LANs) over a wide area on a switched, as-needed basis.SMDS is connectionless, meaning that there is no need to set up a connection through thenetwork before sending data. This provides bandwidth on demand for the "bursty" datatransmission typically found on LANs.SMDS packets contain up to 7168 bytes of data, which is large enough to accept the most common LAN packets. Each packet includes the source address and the destination address and is sent separately from other packets.Each enterprise using SMDS is assigned from one to sixteen unique SMDS addresses, depending on needs. An address … 
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