MULTIPLEX SWITCHING SCHEME FOR COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

• US 20060221884A1
• Filed: 06/20/2006
• Published: 10/05/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/17/1993
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Gilat Satellite Networks Limited
• Original Assignee: Gilat Satellite Networks Limited
• Inventors: Gross, Todd W., Fielding, Dennis E.
• Granted Patent: US 7,583,626 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/316
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/1858 Arrangements for data transmission on the physical system, i.e. for data bit transmission between network components
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/18582 Arrangements for data linking, i.e. for data framing, for error recovery, for multiple access

Abstract

An earth station interface architecture provides full mesh connectivity for a relatively small number of network stations. A component of the architecture is a switch, which employs'"'"' a network interface standard to ‘define the multiplexing of multiple virtual ports across single physical communications port. Through address and control fields of its connectivity control software, the switch can be dynamically configured to provide multilayer addressing, and device selectivity, thereby enabling point-to-point connectivity of multiple terminal devices, such as a plurality of audio circuits, to be effected via a single port. Dial codes on the station side of an audio signal multiplexer link are translated into frame relay addresses (data link connection identifiers) that are added to each frame of data for routing through the network. With this additional layer of routing information, audio (voice) connectivity is now available between any two audio circuits (e.g. trunks) in the network.

Claims

1. An earth station for use in a system having communication stations interconnected via a satellite, the earth station comprising:

a satellite antenna,

a transceiver coupled to the satellite antenna for sending signals to and receiving signals from the satellite antenna,

a switching module comprising;

a server module connecting a plurality of terminal devices, and

a router module inputting data from the plurality of terminal devices, formatting the data into data packets having control bytes for elementary error detection, and routing packets;

wherein the server module is configured to store data.

2. The earth station of claim 1, wherein the server module provides point to point connectivity between the plurality of terminal devices.

3. The earth station of claim 1, wherein the server module processes video.

4. The earth station of claim 1, wherein the server module processes data.

5. The earth station of claim 1, wherein the server module processes video teleconferencing data.

6. A method of transmitting data in the form of packets in a communication system, the method comprising the steps of:

transmitting a packet having a destination address from a first station to a satellite;

transmitting the packet from the satellite to a second station that includes a packet switch coupled to a first terminal device having a first device address;

transmitting the packet from the satellite to a third station;

comparing at the second station at least a portion of the destination address to at least a portion of the first device address; and

processing the packet with the packet switch when the at least portion of the destination address corresponds to at least a portion of the first device address.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the third station includes a packet switch coupled to a plurality of second terminal devices having device addresses and further including the steps of:

determining at the third station that the at least portion of the destination address does not correspond to any portions of the second device addresses; and

discarding the packet.

8. An earth station comprising a data link, and a switch configured for formatting information from data circuits into packets, and filtering and routing down-link directed packets based on the content of the packets, wherein the switch formats the packets using elementary error detection.