Patent ID: 8223638

Claim:
A method of transporting a stream of data packets between at least one source device and at least one destination device over an optical transport network using at least one data frame, each data packet including preamble data and client data, each data frame including an overhead area and a payload area, the overhead area including an OPUk (Optical Channel Payload Unit k) overhead area, and the payload area including an OPUk payload area, the method comprising the steps of: in an accessing step, accessing one or more of the preamble data and the client data of each data packet, each data packet comprising a 10 Gbit/s Ethernet LAN data packet; in a removing step, removing an inter-packet gap between successive packets in the stream of data packets; in an encapsulating step, encapsulating the one or more of the preamble data and the client data of each data packet to generate encapsulated data; and in a mapping step, mapping the encapsulated data to at least one data frame, wherein the mapping step includes, for each data packet in the stream of data packets, mapping the encapsulated data of the data packet to the OPUk payload area of the at least one data frame and to up to a specified portion of the OPUk overhead area of the at least one data frame for subsequent transport of the at least one data frame over the optical transport network, without transferring any justification information in the OPUk overhead area of the at least one data frame between the at least one source device and the at least one destination device.