Abstract: In current voice telephony, CATV, and wireless networks, traffic is channelized for both access and transport. This channelization is wasteful of resources where multiple services have varying demands for bandwidth and holding times, or a service generates traffic that is bursty in nature. The invention solves these problems by providing flexible and adapatable multiservice access to the networks. Customer requirements are checked by monitoring traffic on a local access at a connection request and/or during the established connection, and the local access is configured according to the transmission requirements. The local access can also be configured in response to the network information.

Abstract: A novel transport architecture and network elements use nodes in a ring or virtual ring configuration. Information is exchanged among the nodes in a continuous series of containers carried in a superframe. A container is assigned to a destination node and is divided into partitions which are allocated for source nodes. Therefore, when a container destined to a particular destination node arrives at a node and if this node has information to send to the destination node, it fills the allocated partition within the container with information destined to the destination node. The sizes of the superframe, containers and partitions are all variable dynamically or statically.

Abstract: A thermal printing device comprises a continuous bar of electrically resistive material, with patterns of electrical conductors on each side of the bar. Connections are made to the bar from the conductor patterns at closely spaced positions. The conductor patterns are formed as columns on one side and rows on the other side to enable connections between columns and bar and rows and bar such that the number of external connections is minimized. The connections to the bar from the conductor patterns are staggered on one side of the bar relative to the other side. This doubles the center-to-center distance of such connections as correspond with connections which are opposite each other. This enables wider connection paths while still maintaining the original resolution.