Patent ID: 6963533

Claim:
A system for determining an optimal transmission rate for passing a cell stream from a first location to a second location at a desired transmission rate, the system comprising: a first unit at the first location coupled to one end of each of a plurality of low capacity data links for assisting in determining characteristics of each of the links using a test signal transmitted over each of the links; a second unit at the second location coupled to the other end of each of the links for assisting in determining the characteristics of each of the links based on the characteristic of the test signal received at the second unit; and a processor coupled to the second unit for determining the optimal transmission rate based on the characteristics of the links and the number of links needed to provide the desired transmission rate by: determining a maximum transmission rate for each of the links to create a list of available links and associated maximum transmission rates; selecting the link with the lowest rate and setting all available links to transmit at the same rate to determine a total available rate; finding the next lowest rate from the available rates and setting all other links to transmit at the next lowest rate to determine another total available rate; repeating the finding step to create a list of maximum transmission rates and corresponding total available rates; and choosing a rate from the maximum transmission rates that corresponds to one of the available links, and thus, one total available rate from the total available rates that is at least equal to or greater than the desired transmission rate to produce the optimal transmission rate.