Patent ID: 7804853

Claim:
A method of transporting traffic information from an input interface to an output interface of a network element capable of switching different types of traffic information, the method comprising the steps of: forming an information transport frame structure comprising a plurality of fixed size sequential frames with each frame comprising at least one overhead section, one data stuffing section, and a data section, the data stuffing section and the data section being sized for containing together at least the traffic type which requires most capacity among those expected and, upon reception on the input interface of data of a traffic type, mapping in the frame said data filling with said data all the data section, and continuing in the data stuffing section and, if the traffic type requires less space than that arranged in the frame, filling extra space with stuffing bytes to maintain the frame size with a change in transported traffic type, configuring the structure with fixed dimensions and being repeated at regular intervals, and the traffic type transported being one of optical data unit-index unit k (ODUk), synchronous transport signals (STS-n), synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) virtual containers (VC-n), or constant bit rate signals (CBRx).