Present and future communication services require the integration of data and media applications to provide real-time interactive multimedia services that are reliable and secure. The popularity of the World Wide Web provides a glimpse into the potential of distributed multimedia application services. However, the Internet protocol, TCP/IP, does not have the provisions to adequately handle future real-time interactive multimedia services. Present network protocols are programmed to view and treat all user information packets alike, since application (user) control and data information are bundled within the same packet. The ATM protocol provides more flexible multimedia transmission services for dynamic and static types of information. This paper proposes techniques for enhancing the ATM protocol to enable the support of application communication services as well as network communication services. The paper advocates strict enforcement of the encapsulating of user-control and user-data information in separate and discrete frames at the network-level so that unique application communication services can be specified for the disparate application information traffics. The paper proposes the ability to identify user control and data messages at the network-level. The objective of this paper is to provide an understanding of a new protocol, which provides the capability to optimize services to each of the disparate types of traffic and facilitates the integration of media and data applications. The proposed frame adaptation layer (FAL) protocol enables the various network protocols to be aware of the required application class-of-services and provides the appropriate network services which facilitates traffic shaping and policing.