Patent ID: 8369353

Claim:
A method of operating a communication system, comprising: establishing a first communication link of a first type to exchange first communication traffic between customer equipment and an aggregation node of a communication network; monitoring a communication link performance indicator for the first communication link; establishing a second communication link of a second type to exchange second communication traffic between the customer equipment and the aggregation node of the communication network; moving a portion of the first communication traffic from the first communication link to the second communication link to include the portion of the first communication traffic in the second communication traffic using a header applied to the second communication traffic to direct the second communication traffic across the second communication link and identify at least the portion as associated with the first communication traffic, wherein a first amount of the portion of the second communication traffic is redundant with a first amount of the first communication traffic and a second amount of the portion of the second communication traffic is not redundant with the first communication traffic, and wherein the redundant amounts are based upon the communication link performance indicator; exchanging the second communication traffic over the second communication link and remaining first communication traffic over the first communication link; and in the aggregation node, aggregating the first communication traffic and the second communication traffic into common communication traffic based on the header applied to the second communication traffic and exchanging the common communication traffic over the communication network.