Patent ID: 7324563

Claim:
A method for transporting SDH/SONET client signals as a service, wherein an associate SDH/SONET client payload is embedded within a SDH/SONET server signal, comprising: mapping overhead information of at least one SDH/SONET client signal into the SDH/SONET server signal, wherein the client overhead information of the at least one SDH/SONET client signal is mapped into free overhead positions of the SDH/SONET server signal; and transporting the SDH/SONET server signal with the payload information and the mapped client overhead information of the at least one SDH/SONET client signal embedded therein; wherein data rate adaptation of certain SDH/SONET client overhead information is performed prior to the step of mapping to maintain logical content thereof; the certain SDH/SONET client overhead information comprises Data Communication Channel (DCC) bytes carrying HDLC frames, the data rate adaptation being performed by inserting or deleting idle/flag bytes at positions in the HDLC frames according to the following rules; a flag byte can be inserted directly before or directly after a single flag, an idle flag can be inserted directly before or directly after another idle flag byte or directly between two flags, a flag can be removed if it is directly preceded or directly followed by another flag, and an idle flag can always be removed.