Patent ID: 7110511

Claim:
A method of communicating information across a plurality of paths, wherein each path of said plurality of paths begins near a first point and terminates near a second point, and each path of said plurality of paths is a 2-wire conducting path, the method comprising: converting a first stream of digital data into a plurality of sub-streams, wherein (a) each sub-stream of said plurality of sub-streams is a stream of digital data, (b) the number of sub-streams is equal to the number of paths in said plurality of paths, (c) information content of each sub-stream in said plurality of sub-streams includes a different part of the information in said first stream of digital data, and (d) a data rate of each sub-stream is less than a data rate of said first stream of digital data, encoding each sub-stream in said plurality of sub-streams into a different one of a plurality of downstream signals, wherein substantially all of the power spectrum of each of said plurality of downstream signals is above 3 kHz; transmitting each one of said plurality of downstream signals onto a first end of a different one of said plurality of paths, wherein said first end is located near said first point; receiving one of said plurality of downstream signals from a second end of each of said plurality of paths, wherein said second end is located near said second point; recovering one of said plurality of sub-streams from each one of said plurality of downstream signals; and creating a first recreated stream of digital data from the plurality of sub-streams recovered from said plurality of downstream signals, wherein the first recreated stream of digital data is substantially the same as said first stream of digital data and the first stream of digital data and the first recreated stream of digital data conform to the Ethernet protocol, wherein said receiving of a first one of said plurality of downstream signals from a first one of said plurality of paths includes (a) receiving while presenting a high impedance to signals within the telephone voiceband, (b) presenting a high impedance to signals above voiceband while allowing signals in the telephone voiceband to pass, and (c) converting said voiceband signals into sound, and wherein power is transmitted as an electrical current over at least one of the wires in said plurality of paths and the power is used by circuitry that performs said recovering and creating.