Patent ID: 6879592

Claim:
A communication apparatus for interconnecting plural kinds of communication networks including an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network to transfer information, said communication apparatus comprising: plural kinds of first interfaces for converting plural kinds of control signals or communication signals having different signal formats from plural kinds of communication networks, except the ATM network, to ATM cells; a second interface for receiving an ATM cell to which a control signal or a communication signal is inserted from the ATM network; an ATM switch having a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports for outputting the ATM cell received by any one of the input ports from the first and second interfaces to anyone of the plurality of output ports based on header information of the ATM cell; plural kinds of signal processors, connected to the ATM switch, for converting a signal output from the first and second interfaces to a signal format or protocol used by each of the plural kinds of communication networks; and a control part for receiving the ATM cell, which is output from one of the plural kinds of signal processors and to which the control signal is inserted through the ATM switch, and performing a necessary processing among plural kinds of processings to output the ATM cell to the ATM switch, wherein each of the first and second interfaces rewrites a destination of the received signal so that the received signal is transmitted to one of the plural kinds of signal processors based on the kind of received signal.