Patent ID: 7522633

Claim:
A transmission system, comprising: a sending device for converting higher-layer protocol data to continuous blocks of a fixed length, inserting idle blocks between said continuous blocks to match the sending rate to the transmission rate of the transmission line, and transmitting; at least one stage of relay devices for receiving said continuous blocks and said idle blocks, discarding these idle blocks and continuous blocks containing bit errors to extract only valid continuous blocks, and then inserting idle blocks between said valid continuous blocks to match the sending rate to the transmission rate of the transmission line on a transmission side and transmitting to a prescribed transfer destination; and a receiving device for receiving said continuous blocks and said idle blocks from said relay device of a final stage, discarding these idle blocks and continuous blocks containing bit errors to extract only valid continuous blocks, and reconstructing said higher-layer protocol data from said valid continuous blocks, wherein when said higher-layer protocol data takes the form of frames, said sending device converts said frames to a fixed length by adding null data to tail portions of said frames to make the frame length an integer multiple of a specified length if the length of said frames is not an integer multiple of the specified length, dividing said higher-layer protocol data into units of the specified length, and adding to each unit of specified length a specified number of bits of type information indicating the position of that unit within said higher-layer protocol data, said receiving device reconstructs said higher-layer protocol data by performing a conversion that is the reverse of the conversion in said sending device, said type information indicates that said unit of specified length contains one of higher-layer protocol data comprising a head portion of a higher-layer protocol frame, higher-layer protocol data comprising a middle portion of a higher-layer protocol frame, and higher-layer protocol data comprising a tail portion of a higher-layer protocol frame, and said type information indicating said higher-layer protocol data comprising said tail portion of a higher-layer protocol frame comprises a plurality of type information corresponding to an amount of valid data in said tail portion.