International Business Machines Corporation

Eric S Georges

Claude R Galand

Edward Stanely Suffern

Gerald Lebizay

Hong Linh Truong

Victor Spagnol

Clement Y Poiraud

Philippe Pierre Louis

Xavier Jacquart

Jean-yves Leboudec

A multipurpose data communication network node for interconnecting both ATM and Variable Length (VL) input/output trunks with all combinations of node input versus output trunk connections. The network node includes ATM/VL Receive Adapters and ATM/VL Transmit Adapters, interconnected via a Switching device (44) operating on ATM like packets (i.e. ATM cells) only. The receive adapter includes means (41, 43) for deriving switchable cells from VL traffic possibly including ATM packets and provided over an input VL trunk and means (45, 46) for deriving switchable cells from ATM packets provided on input ATM trunk. The transmit adapter, includes means (47, 48) for reconstructing VL traffic to be fed onto an output VL trunk, and means (49, 50) for reconstructing ATM traffic to be fed onto an output ATM trunk; both means (47, 48) and (49, 50) being fed with switchable cells irrespective of the traffic origin, being it from VL or ATM trunks.

Multipurpose packet switching node for a data communication network

Growing community of inventors

La Gaude, France

Eric S Georges