Abstract: A telecommunication system (1) provides bi-directional communication between TDM signals on one side and ATM signals on the other. An ATM aggregate (10) receives and transmits ATM signals, and a TDM interface (2) receives and transmits TDM signals. A format converter has an ATM bus (9) and a TDM bus (4) connected to their respective interfaces. Service-specific adapters (5-8) are connected between the buses.

Abstract: In a telecommunication controller (1), a messaging system allows real time communication between sub-systems such as a main controller (2) and line cards (3). Requesting application (5) create a proxy (12) which controls the function call via a middleware engine (11) in each of the sub-systems (2,3). A resource middleware engine (11) calls a server (13) which in turn controls performance of the function on the resource (10). The proxies (12) are transient. The servers (13) are static but may be easily added or deleted according to resource changes. Applications (5) and resources (10) are decoupled from the messaging system.