Service providers face the challenge of meeting customer demand for high-density wire-speed Internet access via ATM while managing end-to-end QoS. The Cisco 12000 Series Eight-Port OC-3c/STM-1c ATM Single Mode Intermediate Reach Line Card expands the connectivity options for the Cisco 12000 Series Internet Routers so that service providers can attach the routers directly to their existing ATM infrastructure. The 8-Port OC-3 ATM Line Card supports advanced ATM traffic management features such as per-virtual circuit (VC) and per-virtual path (VP) traffic shaping, per-VC Weighted Random Early Detection (WRED), per-VC Modified Deficit Round Robin (MDRR), including low-latency queuing (LLQ), and non-real-time variable bit rate (nrt-VBR) and unspecified bit rate (UBR) ATM service classes. The segmentation and reassembly (SAR) of IP packets is performed in accordance with RFC 1483, Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM Adaptation Layer 5 (AAL5).