Patent ID: 9712464
Date: 2017-07-18
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A multichannel gateway that is connected to a terminal and two or more communication units that establish one logical line from a bundle of two or more physical lines, at least one of the two or more physical lines having a different communication rate than another one of the two or more physical lines, the multichannel gateway comprising: a memory that stores physical line information including information that indicates for each of the two or more physical lines whether or not the physical line is established for communication, and the communication rate of the physical line; a line manager that detects a status of the communication units and updates the physical line information to include the detected status of the communication units; a packet acquirer that acquires a packet for transmission from the terminal to be transmitted to another terminal; a segmentation necessity determiner that, based on the communication rate of each of the two or more physical lines in the physical line information, calculates respective packet sizes for each of transmission packets to be generated by dividing the packet into segments each with a respective segment size and attaching a respective packet header to each segment for transmission such that each of the transmission packets of each physical line, when transmitted on a corresponding one of the two or more physical lines, will start transmission at a same first time and will complete transmission at a same second time, then based on the calculated packet sizes of the transmission packets, determines to divide the packet for transmission only when the calculated packet size of the transmission packet that is to be transmitted using the corresponding physical line in the two or more physical lines having the lowest communication rate is greater than a size of the respective packet header to be used for that corresponding physical line; a packet divider that divides the packet for transmission into divided segments according to the calculated packet sizes of the transmission packets when the segmentation necessity determiner determines to divide the packet for transmission, and that either attaches a single packet header to the packet for transmission to generate a single transmission packet when the segmentation necessity determiner determines to not divide the packet, or attaches the respective packet header to each of the divided segments to generate multiple transmission packets when the segmentation necessity determiner determines to divide the packet; and a packet transmitter that transmits the single transmission packet or the multiple transmission packets generated by the packet divider to the corresponding communication unit.