Abstract: A technique is provided for allocating access to time slots used for transferring data between nodes in a time multiplexed network, whose bandwidth is divided into cycles. The cycles are in turn divided into control slots for control signaling and data slots for transferring data. The slots allocated to a primary home node may be temporarily allocated to a temporary home node, in which case the temporary home node, instead of the primary home node, then temporarily has the write access to the slots. The slots may subsequently be reallocated to the primary home node. In particular, the degree of temporary allocation of slots to a first node is evaluated. Then, the number of slots having the first node as a primary home node may be increased based upon the evaluation. This decreases the need for temporary allocation of slots within the network.

Abstract: A method and an apparatus for switching data between a set of input bitstreams and a set of output bitstreams in a circuit switched time division multiplexed network is presented. Each bitstream is divided into recurring frames and each frame is divided into time slots. Each one of the input bitstreams is received, and frames of time slot data thereof are temporarily stored in a set of memories. Each of the memories is used for storing frames of a respective bitstream of the input bitstreams. For each frame of each one of the output bitstreams, and sequentially in accordance with the order that the time slot data are to be transmitted in the respective output frame, time slot data is selectively read from frames presently temporarily stored in the set of memories, and is then transmitted into allocated time slots of the output bitstreams.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method and an arrangement for dynamic signalling in a network, such as a Dynamic Synchronous Transfer Mode (DTM) network. The network's bandwidth is divided into cycles, which in turn are divided into control slots for control signalling and data slots for transferring data. Preferably, each or certain nodes have a node controller, which control the access to slots. According to the invention data slots are converted into control slots, called dynamic control slots, or control slots are converted into data slots in order to change the signalling capacity of a node. The dynamic control slots may be used for point-to-point, multicast or broadcast signalling.