Patent ID: 7535900

Claim:
A method, comprising: providing multiple transmission bandwidth streams with differentiated quality of service on a digital bit-stream inter-machine trunk located between a first packet router and a second packet router including: segregating a packet stream into at least a high-quality of service packet stream and a low-quality of service packet stream using a packet processor located at the first packet router; buffering the high-quality of service packet stream using a high-quality of service queue; buffering the low-quality of service packet stream using a low-quality of service queue; formatting the high-quality of service packet stream to generate a first data stream channel independently of the low-quality of service packet stream; formatting the low-quality of service packet stream to generate a second data stream channel independently of the high-quality of service packet stream; time-division multiplexing the first data steam channel and the second data stream channel to define a multiplexed data stream including a plurality of payloads, wherein at least some of each of the plurality of payloads of the multiplexed data stream includes a high-quality of service portion and a low-quality of service portion; and transmitting the multiplexed data stream on the digital bit stream inter-machine trunk using the first packet router.