Patent ID: 6870850

Claim:
A method of transmitting data frames from a sending unit to a receiving unit in a data transmission network comprising at least a backbone wherein the data are transmitted over high speed links enabling long Maximum Transmission Units (MTU) between an ingress node connected to the sending unit by a first access link and an egress node connected to the receiving node by a second access link, with at least one of the first and second access links being a low speed access link requiring the data frames to be segmented into short MTUs between the sending unit and the ingress node and between the egress node and the receiving unit, the method comprising the steps of assembling, in the ingress node, a plurality of consecutive segmented data frames belonging to the same flow of data transmitted from the sending unit to the ingress node into an assembled data frame corresponding to one of the long MTUs, transmitting, the assembled data frame over the backbone from the ingress node to the egress node at a high speed authorized by the backbone links, de-assembling, the assembled data frame, in the egress node into consecutive segmented data frames corresponding to the short MTUs, and, transmitting, the consecutive segmented data frames from the egress node to the receiving unit.