METHOD FOR TRANSMITTING, VIA A PLURALITY OF ASYNCHRONOUSLY TIME-DIVIDED TRANSMISSION CHANNELS, A FLOW OF DATA CELLS, THE STATE OF A COUNTER FOR EACH TRANSMISSION CHANNEL BEING KEPT UP TO DATE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE NUMBER OF DATA CELLS PER UNIT OF TIME

摘要

The flow of data cells through a transmission medium with a number of virtual, asynchronously time-divided transmission channels is protected against excessive crowding of data cells in any channel, by means of a counter for each channel and the recording of the time of arrival of data cells in each channel. At the arrival of each data cell the counter is decreased by a value which is a function of the length of time between the moment of arrival of that data cell and the moment of arrival of a preceding data cell with the same channel designation. The state of the counter is compared with a threshold value and the data cell will be switched through to the downstream portion of the channel if the counter value does not exceed the threshold value. If the data cell is switched through, the counter is increased with a constant value.