Patent ID: 6381244
Filing Date: 2002-04-30
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A connectionless communication method for connectionless transmission of data, comprising the steps of:establishing a plurality of virtual channel connections, each of which is exclusively for connectionless transfer of data, between mutually adjacent exchanges beforehand; disassembling connectionless data into data cells in a terminal; inserting a leading cell, which indicates a destination terminal address of a terminal that is the destination of the data, at the head of the data cells and making a line identifier of the leading cell identical with line identifiers of the data cells in the terminal; sending the leading cell from the terminal to an exchange prior to the data cells; in the exchange, assigning a prescribed virtual channel connection exclusively for communication of said connectionless data upon referring to the destination terminal address contained in the leading cell; transmitting data cells, which have the line identifier identical with that of the leading cell, from the exchange toward the destination terminal, using the virtual channel connection that has been assigned; storing correspondence between the line identifier of the leading cell and the line identifier of the assigned virtual channel connection in a switching table which is provided in the exchange; inserting, into the leading cell, data indicating a necessary bandwidth or necessary quality of communication class required for connectionless communication; providing an exchange with a virtual channel connection table for managing the virtual channel connections set in advance for connectionless communication; and in the exchange, managing through use of the virtual channel connection table, in-use/not-in-use state of each virtual channel connection and bandwidths or quality of service classes set for the virtual channel connections, referring to the virtual channel connection table to select a virtual channel connection optimum for the necessary bandwidth or necessary quality of service class indicated by the leading cell, and assigning this virtual channel connection for connectionless communication, wherein the exchange refers to the switching table to transmit, using the assigned virtual channel connection, data cells having the line identifier identical with that of the leading cell.