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 Line Card (8-Port OC-3 ATM) 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).