Adaptive packet and circuit switching

A technique is described for mixing packet- and circuit-switched data streams on clear channels of any speed. The technique is adaptive in the sense that the bandwidth used by circuits is dynamically allocated according to source burstiness, and packets always use all the remaining bandwidth. Using this concept, function placement in VLSI hardware and code has been investigated for an integrated private network. This adaptive packet/circuit switching conceptual design and prototyping work is seen as a vehicle to understand and develop the functions of bandwidth management and the layering of these functions in VLSI, microcode, and code. The VLSI implementation provides automatic and instantaneous bandwidth reallocation inside a complex frame. This is key to the new proposed classes of service which are required by narrowband and broadband real-time transfer applications