Patent ID: 8160106

Claim:
A method of transmitting Ethernet packets from an Ethernet source point to an Ethernet destination point via a pure Ethernet media communication link, the method comprising compressing the packets at an Ethernet layer in such a manner that the source point transmits complete Ethernet packets, the communication link carries shortened information blocks (SIB) obtained from said complete Ethernet packets, while the destination point receives other complete Ethernet packets essentially identical to the complete Ethernet packets transmitted from the source point, wherein said compressing comprises dropping, during one and the same communication session utilizing point to multi point (p-t-mp), multi point to point (mp-t-p) or multi point-to-multi point (mp-t-mp) transmission, pre-defined and/or predictable fields of the complete Ethernet packets, and wherein said pre-defined and/or predictable fields are Ethernet headers SA and DA of the complete Ethernet packet; said transmission being a full duplex transmission, and said compression being performed in both directions of the transmission, the method further comprising: transmitting the complete Ethernet packets from the source point according to a standard Ethernet protocol, compressing said complete Ethernet packets according to a compression/decompression procedure at the Ethernet layer, to obtain the SIB, conveying the shortened information blocks via the communication link; decompressing said shortened information blocks into the other complete Ethernet packets based on said compression/decompression procedure before having the other complete Ethernet packets forwarded to the destination point, receiving at the destination point said other complete Ethernet packets being essentially identical to the respective complete Ethernet packets transmitted from the source point, preliminarily defining one or more compression templates of the Ethernet packet; at the compressing step, determining one of the compression templates, presently in use for the Ethernet packet; at the compressing step, determining a compression context ID for the compression template presently in use; providing information on the compression template and the compression context ID presently in use for the decompressing step; at the decompressing step, retrieving a compression context corresponding to the compression context ID; compressing further Ethernet packets according to the compression context ID and decompressing according to the retrieved compression context; periodically checking the compression template and the compression context ID; if remain the same, continuing the compressed transmission, if not-repeating the preceding operations for a newly determined compression template and/or a new compression context ID.