Patent ID: 8081665

Claim:
A method for transmitting data over a plurality of channels each associated with a PDH signal said plurality of channels to be virtually concatenated to form a single second channel larger than each of the plurality of channels, the method comprising: encapsulating the data packets; inverse multiplexing said encapsulated data packets into N PDH signals, each PDH signal comprising P frames; wherein N and P are non-zero integers; forming M groups of overhead bits for each of the N PDH signals, each of the M groups of overhead bits comprising a sequence number indicator and a multi-frame indicator; substituting a different one of the M groups of overhead bits for a corresponding number of payload bits in one frame or a subframe out of every P frames of an associated PDH signal thereby to form M×P frames wherein M is a non-zero integer; and transmitting each of the M×P frames, wherein × represents a multiplication operation, wherein each of the transmitted M groups of overhead bits forms an overhead packet that enables a receiver to determine the status of the M×P frames and extract the differential delay experienced by the N PDH signals as they are routed through the virtually concatenated channels.