Abstract: Communication link bonding apparatus and methods are disclosed. Multiple communication links are configured, at a communication link termination module which transfers communication traffic between a further communication link and the multiple communication links, as a group for providing an aggregate group communication traffic rate. The aggregate group communication traffic rate is allocated among the grouped communication links, and communication traffic is distributed for transmission on the communication links in accordance with the communication traffic rate allocation. Once communication links of a group have been initialized using respective initialization communication traffic rates, a communication traffic rate allocation for each of the communication links may be calculated based on an attainable communication traffic rate of the communication link.

Abstract: A method is described for detecting erasures in a stream of sets of digital signal values received at a receiver side after transmission from a transmission side. Subsets of these sets are modulated on distinct carrier signals, each transmitted and received thus modulated carrier signal corresponding to one of a number of predetermined subset related points and to a receipt point on a carrier dependent modulation representing map respectively. The method includes the steps of:selecting for each receipt point the nearest of the predetermined subset related points;calculating a distance between the receipt point and the nearest subset related point and multiplying this distance with a map dependent weight factor;summing the thus obtained weighted distances for all subsets of a set; andmarking the latter set as an erasure when the thus obtained result exceeds a predetermined threshold.