Patent ID: 7136360

Claim:
A method for operating the spacecraft-related portion of an arrangement for transmitting Available Bit Rate service Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) data over a transmission path including a spacecraft, where the spacecraft includes transmission path ATM data routing switches which lack capability for marking Resource Management cells with congestion information, said transmission being in an Available-Bit-Rate operating mode in which data is transmitted over the transmission path in bandwidth which is otherwise unused by services other than Available Bit Rate service Asynchronous Transfer Mode data, said method comprising the steps of: at a source terminal which transmits said Available Bit Rate service Asynchronous Transfer Mode data to said spacecraft, receiving from a source node Available Bit Rate service Asynchronous Transfer Mode data including Resource Management cells, and deleting the Resource Management cells from the stream of Available Bit Rate Asynchronous Transfer Mode data flowing to the spacecraft, so as to reduce the amount of superfluous data flowing in an ABR bandwidth portion of the spacecraft resources; determining at least the presence of absence of congestion in the spacecraft payload in paths associated with said Available Bit Rate service Asynchronous Transfer Mode data by means other than by use of said routing switches, to thereby produce spacecraft-congestion-related signals; coupling said spacecraft-congestion-related signals by way of at least a downlink to said source terminal; and at said source terminal, using information derived from said spacecraft-congestion-related signals to mark back Resource Management cells for return to said source.