Patent ID: 7924872

Claim:
A method for processing a transport packet and an Ethernet packet comprising: receiving at a transport interface a transport stream comprising the transport packet and receiving at a network interface a network stream comprising the Ethernet packet formatted in compliance with an Ethernet specification, the transport packet formatted in compliance with a first protocol specification different from the Ethernet specification; filtering the transport stream to select at least the transport packet; encapsulating the Ethernet packet such that the Ethernet packet header information is preserved, the encapsulating including appending a transport header to at least a portion of the Ethernet packet to form a reformatted packet formatted in compliance with the first protocol specification; and selecting one of the transport packet and the reformatted packet for output into an output stream of packets, wherein the output stream of packets is formatted in compliance with the first protocol specification, wherein selecting further comprises giving priority to the transport packet over the reformatted packet.