Patent ID: 7310353

Claim:
A convergence system for translating data received in an ATM format into a MAC format, the convergence system comprising: a network connection provisioning module to grant or reject requests for a communication channel connection which is adapted to select a compression method from a plurality of selectable compression methods upon a grant of a connection, at least one of which includes mapping ATM cell addressing bits into MAC packet addressing fields; an ATM segmentation module to buffer data which is incoming on the granted connection and to provide portions of the data to other modules depending, at least in part, upon the selected compression method; a MAC header module to derive a header for a MAC packet from data in one or more incoming ATM cells having a common destination in combination with connection parameters including any selected header compression methods; a MAC reassembly module to format data from the ATM segmentation module and the MAC header module into an outgoing MAC data packet having a header and a payload which represents incoming data from one or more ATM cells sharing a common destination; and wherein for at least one of the selectable compression methods the MAC reassembly module is further adapted to include payload data of a plurality of ATM cells sharing a common destination, and to encapsulate at least a portion of ATM header addressing data from at least one to the plurality of ATM cells in the payload of the outgoing MAC data packet.