Patent Document ID: 20040213241
Application ID: 09751808
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A system for passing a cell stream at a particular transmission rate from a first location to a second location, the system comprising: a first unit at the first location coupled to one end of each of a plurality of low capacity data links for receiving the cell stream and inverse multiplexing the cell stream over at least two trained data links selected from the plurality of low capacity data links that are set to active status; a second unit at the second location coupled to the other end of each of the plurality of low capacity data links for receiving and multiplexing the inverse multiplexed cell stream from each of the active trained data links to produce the cell stream; and at least one data link selected from the plurality of low capacity data links that is trained and set to idle status, wherein the first unit and the second unit switch to use the trained idle data link to replace any one of the active trained data links that has failed and wherein the status of the idle data link is changed to active, thereby avoiding system down time due to line failure.