Patent ID: 7346081

Claim:
A method for enabling communication between a first network element (NE) and a second NE of a synchronous network which is adapted to support dynamic application of changes to an aligned group of virtually concatenated channels carrying communication traffic between said first NE and said second NE, the method comprising: distinguishing between a first mode of time aligning said group of virtually concatenated channels following the addition of a new channel to said group in response to a failure event occurring in at least one of the channels belonging to said group, or following a detection that at least one of the previously aligned channels is not aligned with the remaining channels of the group and a second mode of time aligning said group when a new channel is added to the group or a selected channel is removed from the group in response to a request transmitted by a managing element, wherein in said first mode, the time alignment is performed without using any pointer justification action regardless of network delays associated with said group's channels, and in the second mode, if a network delay associated with a new channel to be added to said group of virtually concatenated channels is longer than a network delay associated with said group, the time alignment of the new channel and the group is achieved by using at least one pointer justification action.