Patent ID: 6996111

Claim:
A node for a telecommunications network, comprising: a segmentation and reassembly module (SAR module) to perform segmentation and reassembly (SAR) on ATM cells received by the node, said SAR module particularly providing Virtual Channel Identifier (VCI) and Virtual Path Identifier (VPI) translation (referred to as VCI/VPI translation) and having a direct memory access (DMA) mechanism for a storage external to said SAR module, said SAR module performing a first DMA access when said VCI/VPI translation are representative of an error code correcting (ECC) procedure to be carried out in said node, and said SAR module performing a second DMA access when said VCI/VPI translation correspond to a message that does not require a local ECC procedure; a coder/decoder module for performing an ECC procedure on cells; and, a controller to control said coder/decoder module to perform an error correcting procedure in response to the detection of said first DMA access.