Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) system having an ATM device coupled to multiple physical layer devices

摘要

An asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) system has a plurality of physical layers (24, 50, 52, and 26) coupled to one ATM layer (12) for communicating ATM data cells. In order to allow bi-directional communication, both the receive interface and the transmit interface of FIGS. 14 and 15 are coupled between the ATM layer and each physical (PHY) layer in the plurality of physical layers. In order to identify which physical layer of the plurality of physical layers is to either receive or transmit a data cell, a physical layer ID byte is transmitted along with the UTOPIA protocol multi-byte ATM data cell to address one physical layer in the plurality of physical layers.