MULTIPLE CARRIER COMPRESSION SCHEME

摘要

A method of reducing the bandwidth required to send a plurality of client traffic frames over a plurality of carrier communications networks, each carrier network being arranged to provide a carrier service to said client traffic frames, each client frame comprising client header information (48) and client payload (46), the method comprising at an ingress node of a second carrier network: receiving a frame of traffic from a first carrier network (LANA); determining first compression information (60a) is present in said frame which has replaced redundant header information (48) not used for forwarding said frames in said first carrier network (LANA); generating second compression information to replace the header information (54a) used for forwarding said frames in said first carrier network (LANA), replacing the header information (54a) used to forward client payloads (46) in said first carrier network with said second compression information (60b); and appending header information to said client payload (46) to enable forwarding of said received frame of traffic in said second carrier network (WAN), wherein said second compression information (60b) is stored in association with said replaced first header information (48) and said first compression information (60a).