Patent ID: 7212548

Claim:
A method of transporting a serial stream of high bandwidth serial communication signals from a first site to a second site, that is linked to said first site by way of a plurality of serial communication channels whose individual bandwidths are less than said high bandwidth, and recovering said high bandwidth serial communication signal at said second site for application to a destination communication path, said method comprising the steps of: at said first site (a) demultiplexing said serial stream of high bandwidth serial communication signals into a plurality of packets of serial communication signals having reduced bandwidths capable of being transmitted over said plurality of serial communication channels; (b) for each respective serial communication channel, generating a multibit packet reassembly control word containing first information that identifies said respective serial communication channel, and second information representative of the order in which said plurality of packets of serial communication signals have been demultiplexed in step (a); (c) for each respective serial communication channel, combining respectively different individual bits of said multibit packet reassembly control word generated in step (b) with respectively different packets of serial communication signals demultiplexed in step (a) to produce successive frames of serial communication signals; (d) transmitting respectively different successive frames of serial communication signals from said first site over respectively different ones of said communication channels to said second site; and at said second site (e) receiving said respectively different successive frames of serial communication signals as transmitted from said first site over said respectively different ones of said communication channels; and (f) processing said respectively different successive frames of serial communication signals as received from said first site, in accordance with information contained in said multibit packet reassembly control words contained therein, so as to recover said serial stream of high bandwidth serial communication signals for application to said destination communication path.