Patent ID: 7187654

Claim:
In an edge node having ingress ports, output ports, a switching fabric, a controller, and a time counter at each of said output ports, a method of data burst formulation comprising steps of: receiving burst-transfer permits at said controller, each of the burst transfer permits specifying a burst size; sorting said burst-transfer permits according to destination; distributing said burst-transfer permits to respective output ports; receiving data packets of variable sizes at said ingress ports; segmenting each of said data packets into segments of a predefined size to produce a segmented packet, wherein a last segment that is smaller than said predefined size is null padded; switching each of said segments to a corresponding output port; concatenating, at said corresponding output port, segments of a common destination to form data bursts according to respective burst-transfer permits; modulating an optical carrier by said data bursts to produce a modulated optical carrier; and transmitting said modulated optical carrier to a core node.