摘要 |
A communications network employs an optical communications medium carrying a synchronous communications transport signal including a number of time-division-multiplexed (TDM) channels. A number of bridges include respective interfaces to associated local area network (LAN) segments, and the bridges are coupled to the communications medium by associated add-drop circuits. Each add-drop circuit groups the TDM channels of the transport signal into bundles, each bundle being associated with a different bridge. Each add-drop circuit transmits data traffic originated by the associated bridge on only the bundle associated with the bridge, receives data traffic from the other bridges via the bundles associated with the other bridges, forwards the received data traffic to the associated bridge, and re-transmits at least some of the received data traffic on the bundles for receipt by another of the add-drop circuits.
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