Transporting a gigabit per second data stream over a SDH/SONET network

A telephone network comprising a circuit for receiving a data stream transported over a synchronous network using virtual concatenation, the data stream having a bit rate of R gigabits per second, R being equal to 1 or an integer power of 2, the circuit comprising:

• an input for receiving containers from R times a prescribed number of channels, the containers containing bytes from a block in the data stream;
• a memory for storing information from the containers in a memory for retrieval once bytes from all containers from the block have been received;
• and
• an addressing unit for addressing the memory with an address having a first set of bits determined by a position of the container in the stream of containers and a second set of bits determined from an offset determined by a position of the information in the container added to a base address for a channel from which the container was received, base addresses for a set of the prescribed number of channels being spaced by an address distance equal to the minimum range needed for storing a container in the memory.

A circuit pack for use in a telephone exchange, for receiving a data stream transported over a synchronous network using virtual concatenation, the data stream having a bit rate of R gigabits per second, R being equal to 1 or an integer power of 2, the circuit pack comprising:

• an input for receiving containers from R times a prescribed number of channels, the containers containing bytes from a block in the data stream;
• a memory for storing information from the containers in a memory for retrieval once bytes from all containers of the blocks have been received;
• and
• an addressing unit for addressing the memory with an address having a first set of bits determined by a position of the container in the stream of containers and a second set of bits determined from an offset determined by a position of the information in the container added to a base address for a channel from which the container was received, base addresses for a set of the prescribed number of channels being spaced by an address distance equal to the minimum range needed for storing a container in the memory.

A telephone exchange comprising a circuit for receiving a data stream transported over a synchronous network using virtual concatenation, the data stream having a bit rate of R gigabits per second, R being equal to 1 or an integer power of 2, the circuit comprising:

• an input for receiving containers from R times a prescribed number of channels, the containers containing bytes from a block in the data stream;
• a memory for storing information from the containers in a memory for retrieval once bytes from all containers from the block have been received;
• and
• an addressing unit for addressing the memory with an address having a first set of bits determined by a position of the container in the stream of containers and a second set of bits determined from an offset determined by a position of the information in the container added to a base address for a channel from which the container was received, base addresses for a set of the prescribed number of channels being spaced by an address distance equal to the minimum range needed for storing a container in the memory.