Appeal No. 2002-1383
Application No. 08/868,972
VPI/VCI information and (2) transport of cells from the input port to the correct output
port. Normally, the VPI/VCI information is translated by each switch and changed prior
to the cell being output from the switch. In a typical ATM network, there is an overhead
penalty in setting up and tearing down communications links. A significant resource
overhead is the allocation of VPI/VCI translation table entries within switches. Each
time a communication link is set up or torn down, the translation tables in each switch
involved in the communication link must be allocated and updated. Col. 2, l. 15 - col. 3,
l. 4.
Subramanian discloses a system whereby a central management supervisor 202
(Fig. 2) transmits table updates to each involved switch over a virtual service channel.
Col. 6, ll. 33-38. One virtual path link may exist from client 214 to switch 211, another
virtual path link may exist from switch 211 to switch 221, etc. Each of these virtual path
links may comprise a plurality of virtual channels. For example, one virtual channel may
be set up on each of the various virtual path links between client 214 and client 244 to
allow communication of multiple cells which make up the information to be
communicated from client 214 to client 244. The various virtual channels and virtual
path links may be torn down after the complete message has been transmitted. Id. at ll.
40-51.
The supervisor 202 provides for central management of calls, connection
resources, point-to-point or multi-point routing, topology, and fault-recovery. Col. 7, ll.
41-44. The supervisor provides various services such as:
-7-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007