Lucent Technologies Inc.

Agere Systems Inc.

Bell Communications Research, Inc.

Agere Systems Guardian Corp.

James S Manchester

Jon Anderson

Subrahmanyam Dravida

Bharat Tarachand Doshi

Enrique Hernandez-Valencia

Murali Krishnaswamy

Maarten Petrus Vissers

A simplified data link protocol which may be implemented in a very high-speed transmission system, e.g., SONET, processes a datagram received from an IP facility according to QoS considerations and scrambles a datagram before it is again scrambled by a transmission system, e.g., a SONET transmitter, to ensure that the pattern of a user's data does not match the transmission scrambling pattern. The data link protocol scrambler also employs a novel synchronization scheme. We also use a pointer system which identifies the location of a datagram in a frame to eliminate flags and the need to process user data to ensure that it does not contain and a boundary flag.

Simplified data link protocol processor

The delineation and quick invocation of protection switching is achieved by generating a protection indicator having an initial state at the point that a transmission facility failure is detected and passing the indicator downstream. A switch that receives the indicator either increments or decrements the indicator in accordance with predetermined rules. However, a switch that receives the indicator when it reaches an active state immediately invokes protection switching if that switch is at the sink end of an associated protection path.

System and method for achieving efficient coordination of protection

Protection Bundles (PB) facilitate efficient protection switching in a network and can be applied at any network layer. A PB is preferably assigned to all working signals sharing the exact same protection facilities. The working facilities that a PB traverses define a Bundled Protection Fragment (BPF)(560, 564, 568). The end-points of the BPF exchange coordination protocol messages along the protection facilities when necessary. The protection facilities between the end-points of a BPF define each BPFs Common Protection Route (CPR)(562, 566, 570).

Bundled protection switching in a wide area network background of the

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Freehold, NJ, United States of America

James S Manchester