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Abstract

A method and apparatus for cross-connecting arbitrary fragments of an incoming virtual tributary synchronous payload envelope, or arbitrary fragments of any incoming transmission stream, at a cross-connect element within a communications network is provided without incurring a delay associated with aligning a frame phase of the first digital stream to any arbitrary frame timing reference. The arbitrary fragments are sized smaller than a complete virtual tributary, or equivalent thereof, of the first digital stream, and comprise one or more incoming payload bytes. The incoming payload bytes have incoming identifiers related to their incoming locations and outgoing identifiers related to their outgoing locations. One method achieves this cross-connect by looking up pre-recorded cross-connect information for the fragments in a cross-connect map memory at fixed sequence storage locations related to the incoming identifiers at times synchronous with the incoming first digital transmission stream, presenting outgoing identifiers provided by the cross-connect map memory to an addressing input of the payload memory at times synchronous with the incoming fragments so as to store the incoming fragments in a payload memory in an order to be synchronous with an outgoing second digital transmission stream, and then reading the stored fragments from the payload memory from a fixed sequence of storage locations related to the outgoing identifiers at times synchronous with the outgoing second digital transmission stream. This cross-connect avoids any delay associated with first aligning or locking a frame phase of the incoming stream with any arbitrary frame timing reference.

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