A BACKPLANE PROTOCOL

摘要

A method and apparatus for transferring information in a communications system is described. In one embodiment, the method comprises creating a frame of informationon a first line card and sending the frame over a backplane to a second line card using a serial link interconnect. The frame comprises first, second and third portions. The first portion includes information to rocess the second and third portions. The second portion has packet and time-division multiplexed (TDM) data in multiple channels. Each of the channels is allocable to packet data or TDM data. The third portion includes data placed into the frame to accommodate for differences in timing references between the line cards.