Patent ID: 7310310

Claim:
A method, comprising: transforming a plurality of streams of asynchronous transfer mode cells into a stream of bonded asynchronous transfer mode cells, the plurality of streams of asynchronous transfer mode cells provided by a first plurality of permanent virtual circuits; demultiplexing the stream of bonded asynchronous transfer mode cells into a plurality of streams of inverse multiplexed bonded asynchronous transfer mode cells; transmitting the plurality of streams of inverse multiplexed bonded asynchronous transfer mode cells to a remote location via a second plurality of permanent virtual circuits; wherein the transmitted plurality of streams of inverse multiplexed bonded asynchronous transfer mode cells are multiplexed and transformed into a plurality of multiplexed streams of asynchronous transfer mode cells after transmitting; wherein at least two of the second plurality of permanent virtual circuits are characterized by different bit-rates; wherein transforming the plurality of streams of asynchronous transfer mode cells into the stream of bonded asynchronous transfer mode cells includes adding a plurality of control octets to each cell of the stream of asynchronous transfer mode cells; and utilizing information in the control octets to transform the inverse multiplex bonded asynchronous transfer mode cells into the plurality of multiplexed streams while accounting for the different defined bit-rates of the virtual circuits.