Patent ID: 7369496

Claim:
A method of controlling a flow of frame based data comprising the steps of: receiving frame based data at a synchronous digital network multiplexer providing an interface between a wide area synchronous digital network and a local area network at a first rate of data transmission of said local area network, said data being for transmission over said wide area synchronous digital network, said multiplexer configured to map frame based data into synchronous digital network virtual containers; and at said multiplexer: storing said data in a buffer; monitoring an amount of said data stored in said buffer with respect to a data amount threshold level for said buffer; determining that said amount is greater than said threshold level; and in response to said step of determining, generating a signal comprising a pause frame for adapting said first rate to a second rate of data transmission of said local area network, said second rate being lower than said first rate; and using said generated signal to adapt the data transmission rate of the local area network from the first rate to the second rate.