Abstract: The device essentially consists of an adapter having a centralized unit (5) tasked with manipulating ATM flows and managing access requests, and specialized modules (3.sub.1 . . . 3.sub.k . . . 3.sub.n) which allow direct access to the ATM network by, for instance, a satellite network or a service (2.sub.1 . . . 2.sub.k . . . 2.sub.n). The centralized unit (5) dynamically allocates the available band on the ATM network access resources according to the access requests by the interface towards the outside world, by handling individual requests as separate connections.

Abstract: The peripheral unit for multi-videoconferencing permits multi-videoconferencing while fully exploiting the characteristics of a telecommunications satellite, and can also provide the service to users not connected to the ground network. In particular, the system can connect several remote rooms through a satellite network, interfaceable with a ground control center, to provide an overall mixed ground-satellite network able to simultaneously serve both permanent and temporary users. The peripheral unit is connected on one side to the transceiving station for the satellite link and on the other to the encoder and decoder of video and audio signals, which are generated locally or received from a remote station and organized according to a protocol provided with time-slot frames and superframes.