Patent ID: 7283535

Claim:
A traffic concentrator which aggregates traffic in a radio access network, the traffic concentrator comprising: an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switch which performs a switching operation for switching unspecified bit rate (UBR) virtual channels (VCs) carrying user traffic between plural virtual paths (VPs), the user traffic is transported as ATM Adaptation Layer 2 (AAL2) connections over the unspecified bit rate (UBR) virtual channels (VCs); a control node associated with the ATM switch, the control node being arranged to process AAL2 signaling messages which concern the AAL2 connections included in the VCs for which the ATM switch performs the switching operation; wherein each of the plural virtual paths involved in the switching operation has a connection admission control (CAC) unit which comprises the control node, and wherein the connection admission control (CAC) unit makes decisions regarding allocation of resources in a transport network.