British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

Neil Harrison

Alan McGuire

A method of generating a generic framing procedure hierarchy comprising processing a first generic framing procedure frame to determine the overall length of the generic framing procedure frame, mapping the frame into the generic framing procedure payload area of a second generic framing procedure frame at the next level of the generic framing procedure hierarchy, whereby information enabling the size of the generic framing procedure payload remaining after that frame has been extracted is captured in the header fields of the generic framing procedure frame into which the first frame is encapsulated, and wherein the generic framing procedure header indicates whether there are more frames left in the mapping hierarchy when de-encapsulating (i.e., running down) the generic framing procedure frame stack by providing an indicator at level N of the hierarchy that at the level N&#x2212;1 there is a generic framing procedure frame to extract.

Adaptation scheme for communications traffic

A communications network provides a carrier Ethernet service without requiring the client signal to be identified by an Ethertype in a carrier Ethernet frame. A plurality of differing types of client signals can thus be encapsulated within the same carrier Ethernet service channel by using a generic framing procedure adaptation layer. The client signals are adapted for encapsulation within the carrier Ethernet frames by mapping the client signal within a generic framing procedure adaptation layer signal and then by mapping the generic framing procedure adaptation layer signal into the carrier Ethernet signal. As the client signal is identified within said generic framing procedure signal only a generic framing signal Ethertype is required. The mapping protocol enables a single Ethernet frame to carry a plurality of client signals.

Client/server adaptation scheme for communications traffic

A method of partitioning the header stack of a data packet, the header stack conforming to a label switching protocol, the method comprising: receiving the packet at an edge mode of a routing domain in the communication system; and processing the label header stack at the edge node to add a new stack entry having a label field comprising a value which delimits the header stack entries between a stack domain configurable by the node belonging to a first routing domain of the label switching protocol and at least one other stack domain configurable by a node belonging to another routing domain of the communications system.

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Boughton, United Kingdom

Neil Harrison