Patent ID: 7436815

Claim:
A system for switching information in a time division multiplexed (TDM) communications network in which the TDM time slots correspond to channels of circuit information, comprising: a circuit interface including; logic to receive information from the TDM communication network, to extract circuit data therefrom, and to provide the extracted circuit data on an internal bus, and logic to receive circuit data from an internal bus and to transmit the data received from the internal bus on to the TDM communications network; a switching fabric for receiving packets having a header and a payload wherein the header includes information identifying a destination for the packet and wherein the fabric further transmits a received packet in accordance with the destination identification in the packet header; adaptation logic, responsive to the circuit interface, including; logic to pack information from multiple circuits into a payload of a packet, logic to provide channel numbers in the payload of the packet, wherein the channel numbers identify the channel on which the circuit data should eventually be transmitted, wherein the logic to pack information from multiple circuits into a payload and the logic to provide channel numbers are operable to cooperate to interleave circuit data and channel numbers in the payload by repeatedly providing two channel numbers followed by four bytes of information for each channel, in a total of eight channels, scheduling logic to schedule the delivery of a packet having a payload packed with information from multiple circuits, logic to receive packets from the switching fabric, and logic to extract circuit data from multiple packets onto an identified channel.