Multipurpose packet switching node for a data communication network

摘要

Multipurpose data communication network node made to enable interconnecting both ATM and Variable Length (VL) input/output trunks with all combinations of node input versus output trunks connections made possible. The network node includes ATM/VL Receive Adapters and ATM/VL Transmit Adapters, interconnected via a Switching device (44) operating on ATM like packets (i. e. ATM cells) only. The receive adapter includes means (41, 43) for deriving ATM cells from VL traffic possibly including ATM packets and provided over an input VL trunk (45, 46) and means for deriving ATM cells from ATM packets provided on input ATM trunk. The transmit adapter, includes means (47, 48) for reconstructing VL traffic to be fed onto an output VL trunk, and means (49, 50) for reconstructing ATM traffic to be fed onto an output ATM trunk ; both means (47, 48) and (49, 50) being fed with ATM cells irrespective of the traffic origin, being it from VL or ATM trunks.