Patent ID: 7787460

Claim:
A network element, comprising: a plurality of mappers for mapping packet traffic to electrical streams; a host network interface for receiving packet traffic from a packet-switched network, the host network interface including a packet switch forwarding a first portion of the packet traffic to a first one of the mappers and a second portion of the packet traffic to a second one of the mappers, the first one of the mappers mapping the first portion of the packet traffic into a first electrical stream targeted to a first destination on an optical transport network and the second one of the mappers mapping the second portion of the packet traffic into a second electrical stream targeted to a second destination on the optical transport network, and an optical interface operating at a bandwidth for transporting optical signals onto the optical transport network, the bandwidth being allocated between the first and second electrical streams; wherein each mapper includes Link Capacity Adjustment Schemes (LCAS) and Virtual Concatenation (VCAT) technologies for dynamically controlling the bandwidth allocated to the electrical stream produced by that mapper.