The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 14, 2003
Filed:
Jun. 16, 1998
Forrest L. Pierson, Jr., Dallas, TX (US);
MCI Communications Corporation, Washington, DC (US);
Abstract
A method, apparatus, and computer program product of interfacing a time-domain multiplexed (TDM) link with a cell-switched network. The TDM link supports one or more active channels and one or more idle channels and supplies TDM frames with a sample of each channel in a dedicated timeslot. The TDM link is terminated at a first network node. One or more idle timeslots are removed from each TDM frame to create a compressed TDM frame, where each idle timeslot carries a sample of an idle channel. One or more compressed TDM frames are loaded in a cell that is sent over the cell-switched network to a second network node. The compressed TDM frames are unloaded from the cell. Idle timeslots are inserted in the compressed TDM frames to restore the compressed TDM frames to complete TDM frames. The bandwidth of the cell switched network is efficiently utilized because idle channel samples are not carried over the cell-switched network. In one embodiment, the TDM link is a T1 link that carries T1 frames, and the cell switched network is an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network that carries ATM cells.