Patent ID: 7092394

Claim:
Network termination equipment for use in a shelf of a telecommunications system, said network termination equipment for connection to an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network and to a plurality of line termination equipment also for use in said shelf for connection to subscriber equipment, said network termination equipment comprising: physical medium termination equipment for interfacing to a physical medium by a serial input/output connection to said ATM network and for providing a parallel input/output; ATM transmission convergence sublayer device connected to said parallel input/output for recovering/mapping ATM cells from/to frames of a transport format of said parallel input/output; ATM layer processor connected to said ATM transmission convergence sublayer device for layer processing downstream ATM cells recovered by said ATM transmission convergence sublayer device and for providing upstream ATM cells to said ATM transmission convergence sublayer device; and an ATM bus interface responsive to downstream ATM cells from said ATM layer processor for providing said downstream ATM cells for an ATM bus in said shelf and responsive to upstream ATM cells with a guard byte for providing said upstream cells to said ATM layer processor without said guard byte.