Patent ID: 7940772

Claim:
A method of transporting asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) cells in a media gateway having an Ethernet switching fabric, the method comprising: (a) receiving at least one ingress ATM cell at an ATM network interface of a media gateway, wherein the media gateway includes having an internal Ethernet switching fabric; (b) identifying, in the media gateway, a connection with which the at least one ATM cell is associated; (c) encapsulating, in the media gateway, the at least one ATM cell in an Ethernet frame addressed to an Ethernet address corresponding to a media processing resource in the media gateway associated with the connection, wherein the media processing resource comprises a voice server in the media gateway; and (d) forwarding the Ethernet frame to the media processing resource via the internal Ethernet switching fabric over the connection which is identified by an internal virtual path identifier/virtual channel identifier (VPI/VCI) value associated with the Ethernet address, wherein the media gateway is configured to perform media format translations for media streams communicated between communication terminals and is controlled by a media gateway controller, and wherein the internal VPI/VCI value is translated from a network VPI/VCI value associated with the at least one ingress ATM cell.