Patent ID: 7505466

Claim:
An interworking device for supporting network interworking between an Ethernet communication network and an ATM network, the interworking device including: a first network interface operable to communicate with the Ethernet communication network using an Ethernet communication protocol; a second network interface operable to communicate with the ATM communication network using an ATM protocol; and a processing unit in communication with the first network interface and the second network interface, the processing unit: encapsulating frames received from the Ethernet network into ATM frames; decapsulating frames received from the ATM network to recover Ethernet frames; and mapping parameters corresponding to the received one of the ATM and Ethernet frames into the other of the ATM and Ethernet frames, the mapped parameters including connection configuration control plane information and data plane parameters corresponding to individual frames, the data plane parameters including discard eligibility mapping between a cell loss priority (CLP) field in the ATM frame with a p-bits value in the Ethernet frame.