Patent ID: 7352744

Claim:
A switched full-duplex Ethernet communication network comprising: at least one source subscriber equipment and at least one destination subscriber equipment connected to each other through at least one physical link through at least one switch and through at least one virtual link, which is a conceptual representation of a link from a source equipment to at least one destination equipment, wherein each source equipment that transmits Ethernet frames comprises: a control to segregate between virtual links and to allocate a passband for each virtual link, the passband of a virtual link being eciual to: (packet size)/(minimum inter-packet time), the sum of passbands of the virtual links in transmission being less than about 5 Mbits/s; and a control to multiplex the virtual links on the physical links output from the source equipment, each transmitted frame having a field that identifies the virtual link to which it belongs, wherein each switch is configured to discard incoming packets if, for each incoming virtual link, one or more predetermined time constraints for said incoming packets are violated, and wherein each destination equipment is configured to subscribe for an application in reception to at least one virtual link and to make the segregation between virtual links to said application for the duration of the application.