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Abstract

A telecommunications network of the type having links with long propagation delay uses an asynchronous transfer mode in which small, fixed-length blocks of information (cells) are transferred at very high speed. Each long-haul hop within the network is phase-locked to a fixed period, and time slots of a granularity of one cell are pre-allocated to the virtual circuits. The network operates in a near-synchronous (plesiochronous) manner. By pre-allocating cells, it is assured that the cells will not arrive at a faster rate than that at which each receiving node can forward them on to the next hop. When bursts of heavy traffic occur, the network responds by slowing or limiting access, rather than by loss of data at intermediate nodes due to buffer overflow.

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First Claim