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Abstract

A cell assembly disassembly facility for interconnecting a local area network and an ATM switch includes an address table and a cell buffer for receiving ATM cells from the switch. A cell disassembler, connected to the cell buffer, disassembles the ATM cells into a packet for coupling to the LAN. The source address, VPI and VCI of each BOM (beginning-of-message) or SSM (single-segment-message) ATM cell in the cell buffer are stored into the DA, VPI and VCI fields of an entry of the table. Entries having identical source addresses (SA) are detected. If the same SA entries have different VPIs and VCIs, they are divided into at least two groups of entries. A majority decision is made on the entry groups to determine a winner. If one of the groups is determined to be a winner, the rest of the groups is erased and all the entries of the remaining group are then erased except for one entry. If there are two or more groups of largest number, all the entries of the groups are erased except for one that is most recently stored, or if at least one group of smaller number is present in addition to the groups of largest number, the smaller group is erased before erasing all entries other than the most recent one. When a packet is received by a packet buffer, the address table is searched for a DA field using the destination of the packet as a search key, and a VPI and a VCI are read from the entry of the DA field into each ATM cell that is sent to the ATM switch.

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First Claim