Patent ID: 7701976

Claim:
A communications system, comprising: a segmenting mechanism configured to receive a plurality of payloads and divide each of the received payloads into segments; a framing mechanism configured to insert at least one of the segments from each of the plurality of payloads into a packet; a first interface configured to transmit the packet; and a second interface configured to transmit segment information about the segments in the packet, wherein each of the segments is inserted into timeslots in a segment status packet having a corresponding data length and segment status transmitted by the second interface, wherein the first interface comprises a first ten gigabit media independent interface in communication with a first ten gigabit attachment unit interface and the second interface comprises a second ten gigabit media independent interface in communication with a second ten gigabit attachment unit interface, wherein the first ten gigabit attachment unit interface transmits the packet to the second ten gigabit attachment unit interface.