Patent ID: 6804243
Filing Date: 2004-10-12
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A computer peripheral device for receiving Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) communications from a host computer and for forwarding the communications to a communications facility for transmission as ATM cells, comprising:a USB port for coupling to the host computer by way of a Universal Serial Bus connection; a communications interface, coupled to the communications facility, for forwarding the ATM cells to the communications facility; a processing device, coupled to the communications interface, for temporarily storing the ATM cells; and a USB interface device, coupled to the USB port and to the processing device, for performing segmentation of ATM communications from the host computer, comprising: shared memory, for buffering header and payload portions of an ATM packet received from the host computer over the USB port being accessible at a corresponding endpoint location in the shared memory; USB interface module, coupled to the USB port, for controlling access to the shared memory by the host computer; and an ATM transmit controller, for retrieving the header and payload portions of the ATM packet from the shared memory and for forwarding the retrieved portions to the processing device, the ATM transmit controller comprising: a header register for storing the header portion of the ATM packet; and segmentation logic for controlling the forwarding of the contents of the header register and the retrieved payload portions of the ATM packet to the processing device in the form of a plurality of ATM cells, each ATM cell including a cell header portion corresponding to the contents of the header register, and a payload portion corresponding to a portion of the payload portion of the ATM packet.