Patent ID: 7684404

Claim:
A method for formatting asynchronous transfer mode data for transmission between devices, comprising: assessing, in a network, the data transmission requirements of a receiving ATM physical layer device for receiving a transfer of an ATM cell from a transmitting ATM-layer device over a system packet interface (SPI), and based on the assessing, selecting, in the network, an appropriate cell format for transmitting the ATM cell to the receiving physical layer device, wherein selecting the appropriate cell format is from a plurality of cell formats comprising: a fixed size header and a fixed size payload; the fixed size header, a header error control component, the fixed size payload, and a dummy component; and the fixed size header, the header error control component, a user component, and the fixed size payload, wherein the header and payload comprise stacked bytes, wherein the stacked bytes are a sequential arrangement of bytes in which two consecutive bytes in the sequential arrangement of bytes are ordered to fit across a transmission bus in accordance with the SPI.