Ima is also the Hebrew word for mother. It is spelled aleph mem aleph .

When it comes to ATM physical layer, most of the wide-area interconnection options are expensive. The most basic distance connection is ATM over T1 (DS0) or E1. The next increment of bandwidth beyond that is over DS-3 or E3, a pricey move that may be overkill for many network situations.

Enter IMA. Inverse Multiplexing over ATM (in Cisco-speak; sometimes called IAM, AIM, or other abbreviations) is a documented standard (ATM Forum AF-PHY-0086.001) that allows multiple T1/E1 ATM connections to be grouped together for custom ATM links.

IMA component access links are assigned into "IMA groups" which appear as a single ATM physical interface to routing equipment. However, these IMA groups are more intelligent than EQL, multilink PPP or other "bonding" technologies. For each ATM cell, the least-busy link is used. This causes a a very efficient use of the available bandwidth.