Appeal No. 2002-1044
Application No. 09/017,096
Invention
The invention relates to a coupling device (switch) for a local network operating
in the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) which comprises a central cell memory for
buffering packets formed by individual ATM cells. See page 1 of Appellants’
specification. The entire coupling device (switch) is shown in Figure 4. A central
memory control device 40 receives ATM cells over the feed lines 43 and provides them
to the monitoring device 41 which evaluates the cell’s header, and to the gate 42. The
gate 42 receives discard signals from the gate 8 of the control logic 44 and sends the
cells, which are not to be discarded to the central cell memory 45. See Appellants’
specification, page 9.
Independent claim 10 is representative of the Appellants’ claimed invention and
is reproduced as follows:
10. A coupling device, for a network operating in the asynchronous
transfer mode (ATM), comprising:
means for receiving individual ATM cells each having a respective
header,
a central cell memory for buffer storage of packets formed by said
individual ATM cells,
a central memory control device for controlling storage in the
central cell memory and the writing and reading processes for packets
stored in and read from the central cell memory,
2
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Last modified: November 3, 2007