Patent ID: 6981064

Claim:
A method of supporting a plurality of point-to-point sessions in a network device contained in a communication network, each point-to-point session being identified by a session identifier and having a user system at one end, said communication network containing a backbone implemented according to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) protocol, said method comprising: receiving in said network device data on said plurality of point-to-point sessions; determining a virtual circuit identifier and a channel identifier corresponding to each of said plurality of sessions, wherein said virtual circuit identifier comprises VPI/VCI (virtual path identifier/virtual circuit identifier) and uniquely identifies a virtual circuit configured on said communication network and said channel identifier identifies a channel within said virtual circuit, said channel being provided according to an adaptation layer of said ATM protocol; generating a plurality of cells encapsulating said data, wherein said plurality of cells are generated for transmission on said virtual circuit identified by said virtual circuit identifier, data related to each of said plurality of point-to-point sessions being encoded in a corresponding channel identified by the corresponding channel identifier; maintaining a plurality of input queues, each of said plurality of input queues being associated with a corresponding one of said channels provided within said virtual circuit; storing cells related to each of said channels in a corresponding one of said plurality of said input queues; and placing in an output queue, cells from different input queues according to the QoS requirements of the individual channels, and transmitting from said network device said plurality of cells to provide different QOS to different channels such that corresponding different QOS are provided to different ones of said plurality of point-to-point sessions, wherein transmitting on said single virtual circuit minimizes the number of virtual circuits on said backbone, and wherein said transmitting transmits cells from said output queue in a sequential order, whereby a first cell placed in a first input queue is transmitted after a second cell placed in a second input queue even though said first cell is placed in said first input queue before said second cell is placed in said second input queue, wherein said first input queue and said second input queue are contained in said plurality of input queues.