Method and network element for a safety transport of ethernet frames over a transport SDH/SONET network

A Network Element of a SDH/SONET network able to transport an Ethernet signal through a pipe from a sending point to a receiving point over at least one synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) or a synchronous optical networking (SONET) network, the at least one SDH/SONET network comprising further network elements or nodes, fiber connections connecting the network elements and SDH/SONET virtual containers, the transport being managed through a new layer over SDH/SONET network physical layer, the new layer comprising Access Points, links of Access Point pairs and circuits, namely the possible routes for connecting a pair of Access Points, the network element being characterized by comprising:

• an Access Point receiving Ethernet frames to be transported;
• mapping means for mapping the Ethernet frames into Virtual Containers;
• a label assignor assigning a label to every frame according to a sequence;
• a memory for storing a copy of the sent labeled frames;
• and
• a receiver for receiving the sent labeled frames;
• means for re-ordering the received frames according to the assigned sequence label;
• a pointer and means for updating the value thereof according to the label of the last correct frame of the sequence;
• and an Access Point for outputting the frames.