Patent ID: 7912045

Claim:
A data communication system for communicating one or more payload streamed data signals and an auxiliary data signal, the auxiliary data signal being arranged as one or more data packets according to a data packet protocol, each packet having a respective packet destination address, the system comprising: at least two data handling nodes, a transmitting one of said data handling nodes configured to transmit data to a receiving one of said data handling nodes across a data connection link; a transmission data formatter associated with said transmitting node configured to format said data packets of said auxiliary data signal into a streamed data signal format and multiplex said payload streamed data signals and said formatted auxiliary data signal into a transmission bitstream for transmission so that bits of the formatted auxiliary data signal are periodically interspersed as single bits amongst bits of the payload streamed data signals in the transmission bitstream; a received data reformatter associated with said receiving node configured to demultiplex said transmission bitstream into said payload streamed data signals and said formatted auxiliary data signal and reformat said demultiplexed formatted auxiliary data signal into packets of said auxiliary data signal according to said data packet protocol.