Voice circuit emulation system in a packet switching network

A process for establishing a circuit switching connection for routing circuit emulation packets in a packet switching network comprising a plurality of switching nodes interconnected by connection lines and including intermediary switching nodes connected to other switching nodes and end switching nodes each connected to at least an exchange telephone device, each switching node being associated to a control point in charge of controlling the exchange of voice signals carried by circuit emulation (CE) packets in the network between two exchange telephone devices, said process comprising the steps of:

• providing for each switching node of a circuit switching connection a circuit emulation server for reserving a slot (k1) on an input connection line (i) and sending an activate slot message to a preceding circuit emulation server of said input connection line containing the identification of said input connection line and the identification of said reserve slot;
• determining the best route to transmit voice signals between any source exchange telephone device and any destination exchange telephone device;
• configuring each switching node of said best route for receiving and transmitting CE packets containing at least one slot of voice signals;
• and
• sending, from each control point associated with said each switching node of said best route to each circuit emulation server associated with said each switching node, a set-up slot message identifying the input connection line (1), an output connection line (j), the circuit emulation server associated to the next switching node (N.CES) of the connection and the circuit emulation server associated to the preceding switching node (P.EES).

A circuit emulation CE server for using in a packet switching communications network having switching nodes interconnected by connection lines;

• said CE server comprising:
• a buffer memory for storing IN CE packets and OUT CE packets;
• a local store for storing routing tables containing, for each incoming connection line, the identification of each outgoing connection line, the identification of each outgoing connection line associated to each slot of the circuit emulation packet received from said incoming connection line and the identification of each slot of the CE packet to be transmitted on said outgoing transmission line;
• and
• a switch module for monitoring the routing tables and switching slots, containing voice signals, contained in the IN CE packets received from an incoming connection line to slots contained in the OUT CE packets for subsequent transmission on different outgoing connection lines.