Nortel Networks Corporation

LeRoy Anthony Pick

James R Mattson

Peter William Phelps

Nicola Benvenuti

Dino B Fatica

Hugues Tournier

Suet Yuen

Bernard Thiboutot

Jinghui Li

Michael H Diec

Stephen Roberts

Joel Milgram

Jose K Kokkat

Timothy P Munro

It is proposed that currently unused portions of transport overhead in frames sent on a high-speed outgoing channel be used to carry error count information from each of four low-speed input channels. At a 4:1 combiner, error monitoring bytes are extracted from transport overhead of frames received on each of the four input channels. Error counts are determined and accumulated for each input channel before being passed to a transport overhead generator for the outgoing channel, where they are inserted as bit patterns in unused portions of the transport overhead. At a receiving demultiplexer, the error counts are extracted from the transport overhead of incoming frames. The extracted error counts are then used to alter the error monitoring bytes included in the transport overhead of frames sent on each of four outgoing channels such that, at the far end of those outgoing channels, a correct number of errors for the three part path may be determined.

Transparent error count transfer method and apparatus

An automated method of detecting, and provisioning connections between interconnected nodes in a consolidated network element involves sending messages between the nodes. The messages are inserted into data frames sent from respective transmit ports through inter-node links, to respective receive ports. The messages contain information used to provision the receive ports at which they are received, and information for identifying equipment that generated, transmitted, and conveyed the message, respectively, so that the connectivity of the interconnected nodes can be verified.

Automated method for connection discovery within consolidated network elements

The present invention overcomes the shortcomings of the prior art by providing a method of encoding bit error rates using a two-tiered system. If the bit error rate is less than a threshold value, the bit error rate is directly encoded in binary into substantially equal portions. However, if the error rate is equal to or greater than the threshold value, the error rate is encoded into equal valued amounts using a common step value. A remainder amount is also formulated to account for any remainders. Multiplying the equal valued amounts that are scaled by a common base value and then adding it all up along with the remainder amount results in a value which is at worst, within 0.2% of the original bit error rate value.

Combiner/TMUX simulated B1 transparency in fiber optic networks running SONET

A tuning system for use in a receiver of an optical transmission system. The receiver includes a data channel transporting a data signal and a monitoring channel transporting a copy of the data signal. The tuning system includes a processing module for processing the copy of the data signal to generate a control signal conveying tuning information. This tuning information is used by the receiver to alter an operating point of the receiver on the data channel. The operating point of the receiver that is susceptible to be altered by the control signal is a decision threshold applied on the data signal to discriminate one binary value from another binary value on the data channel of the receiver. This approach allows, when required or desired, tuning of the system while the system is in service. This is possible since the tuning of the system is performed using the monitoring channel, and does not disturb nor corrupt the actual data being transported on the data channel.

Method and apparatus for in-service optimization of the performance of an optical transmission system

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Nepean, Canada

LeRoy Anthony Pick