Patent ID: 7899042

Claim:
A system comprising: external data sources, a local area network connecting peripherals, a gateway for establishing connections between the local area network and the external data sources, the gateway being scalable such that the gateway is distributed among some peripherals called gateway modules, each gateway module connected to at least one external data source, the gateway modules being chained together, and each gateway module managing introduction or withdrawal of new gateway modules, each gateway module comprising means to establish the complete connection between the local area network and the external data source independently of whether other gateway modules have established a connection with an external source, wherein each gateway module handles a plurality of isochronous channels on the local area network, wherein adding new gateway modules increases the number of isochronous channels on the local area network, and wherein each gateway module has means for controlling incoming data from a multiple program transport stream received from one external data source according to one request of a peripheral on the local area network and for sending the incoming data received from the one external data source to the local area network in order to reduce bandwidth occupation on the local area network.