Concatenation of containers in synchronous digital hierarchy network

Abstract

A method of transmitting OSI layer 2 datacoms data by direct incorporation into a plurality of synchronous digital hierarchy virtual containers is disclosed, in which a higher bit rate OSI layer 2 data frame is multiplexed into a plurality of lower bit rate SDH (or SONET) virtual containers, which are transmitted simultaneously and in parallel over a synchronous communications network. The plurality of virtual containers are virtually concatenated by association of the payloads of the plurality of virtual containers. Re-assembly of the OSI layer 2 data frames from a plurality of virtually concatenated VCs is achieved by storing each received VC payload corresponding to an OSI layer 2 data frame in a corresponding respective memory location, and alternately reading interleaved bytes from the plurality of payloads under control of a plurality of read pointers.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The present invention relates to containers in a synchronous digital network, and particularly, although not exclusively, to a synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) network or a synchronous optical network (SONET). BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION [0002] Historically, the telecommunications industry has developed separately and largely independently from the computing industry. Conventional telecommunications systems are characterized by having high reliability circuit switched networks for communicating over long distances, whereas data communications between communicating computers is largely based upon shared access packet communications. [0003] Datacoms may operate over a local area, to form a local area network (LAN) or over a wide area to form a wide area network (WAN). Historically the difference between a LAN and a WAN is one of geographical coverage. A LAN may cover communicating computing devices distributed over an area of kilometers or tens of kilo...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The present invention provides a synchronous digital container system that allows for efficient and minimum delay in transporting frame-based data packets directly over a synchronous network without the need for intermediate protocol layers. The invention also includes a method for generating and associating a plurality of virtual containers in a way that overcomes variations in delay between different paths across the network. The virtual containers are generated in parallel and can be associated using stream identification data or sequence identification data. The invention also provides a method for recovering data from the virtual containers. Overall, the invention improves the speed and reliability of transmitting data over synchronous networks."

Problems solved by technology

However, the historical distinction between local area networks and wide area networks is becoming increasingly blurred.

Because conventional telecoms systems have developed in parallel with conventional datacoms systems, there is a significant mis-match in data rates between conventional datacoms protocols as used in LANs and WANs, and conventional telecoms protocols.

However, this is inconvenient for datacoms providers since datacoms protocols have developed using a completely different set of interfaces and protocols, for example carrier sense multiple access collision detection CSMA / CD systems, subject of IEEE standard 802.3, and Ethernet which is available in 10 MBits / s, 100 MBits / s and 1 GigaBits / s versions.

Conventional datacoms protocols do not match up very well to conventional telecoms interfaces, for example E1, E3, T1, STM-1 data rates, because of a mis-match in data rates and technologies between conventional datacoms and conventional telecoms.

Since data rates used by conventional OSI layer 2 datacoms systems are either higher than data rates of individual virtual containers in SDH systems or fit inefficiently into available faster virtual containers, there is the problem of how to carry higher bit rate OSI layer 2 datacoms traffic in SDH virtual containers, to achieve the result of an OSI layer 2 channel carried over an SDH network.

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