Method and apparatus to monitor and analyze network information of an inverse multiplexed asynchronous transfer mode network

A method comprising:

• monitoring inverse multiplexing over asynchronous transfer mode (IMA) links of an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network;
• determining an IMA frame length value of the IMA links in response to detecting an IMA control protocol (ICP) cell;
• framing the IMA links corresponding to the determined IMA frame length value;
• determining the IMA links to be in an in-frame state in response to ICP cells being located at predetermined positions in a stream of the cells, and determining the IMA links to be in an out-of-frame state in response to the ICP cells not being located at the predetermined positions;
• determining statistics regarding cells transmitting through the IMA links;
• generating sequence numbers for the cells in response to the IMA links being determined to be in the in-frame state;
• and aligning the cells to be output in a correct order according to the sequence numbers.

An apparatus to determine statistics regarding one or more inverse multiplexing over asynchronous transfer mode (IMA) links of an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network, the apparatus comprising:

• one or more IMA link pre-processors to process cells from the respective one or more IMA links according to a type of the cells, wherein each of the one or more IMA link pre-processors comprises a cell parser to determine whether each of the cells is a filler cell, an IMA control protocol (ICP) cell, a changing ICP cell, or a payload cell, and add identification data to the determined filler cell, ICP cell, changing ICP cell, or payload cell;
• a select and collapse unit to select which of the one or more IMA links to receive the processed cells from, and collapse the processed cells of the selected IMA links into one stream;
• and
• an aligner to receive the one stream of processed cells from the select and collapse unit and determine statistics regarding the processed cells of the one stream.