Patent ID: 8718067
Filing Date: 2014-05-06
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method of encapsulating data from prioritized data packets in frames for transport in a DSL communication system, the method comprising: forming frames consisting of an integer number M sync bytes indicative of a frame boundary and a data field consisting of an integer number N byte fields, M and N being positive integers, wherein the individual frames are a fixed number N+M bytes long and further configured for transmission as individual frames in the DSL communication system; encapsulating data from data packets in data fields of one or more frames for transportation in the DSL communication system, wherein a length of at least one of the data packets to be encapsulated is larger than the length of a data field of each frame; selectively suspending encapsulation of data from a data packet of a first priority to encapsulate data from a pre-empting data packet of a second priority; and resuming encapsulation of at least a portion of remaining data from a suspended data packet of the first priority in a frame in which a pre-empting data packet of the second priority is completed; wherein both the pre-empting and pre-empted data packets can be short packets having a length less than N-1 bytes; wherein the pre-empting packet is a short packet that starts and completes in a single frame, and wherein resuming encapsulation of at least a portion of the remaining data comprises encapsulating at least a portion of the remaining data from the suspended data packet in the frame in which the pre-empting data packet starts and completes; wherein resuming encapsulation of at least a portion of remaining data from a suspended data packet comprises providing a control byte in the data field after a final data byte of the pre-empting data packet, the control byte being indicative of an end of the data bytes of the suspended data packet in the data field of the same frame.