Patent ID: 6442163
Filing Date: 2002-08-27
Classification: H04J,H04L,H04Q

Abstract:
In terminating an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) multiplexed data stream at a functional unit, virtual channel payload data being carried in cells in the data stream, a depacketizer comprising:a) a plurality of cell buffers, each buffer storing the virtual channel payload data contained in a single cell, the buffers being loaded in sequence in accordance with a message sequence number carried by each cell and emptied in accordance with a depacketizer algorithm to form a non-continuous data stream; b) a fill-in cell format generator which, on the failure of a valid cell to arrive creating a missing cell, causes the replacement of the missing cell by a fill-in cell in the non-continuous data stream; and c) a time-out function generator which is started after each cell has been depacketized and also after fill-in replacement cells have been generated, except when the cell buffers have at least two full cells and at least two fill-in cells have been generated in succession.