Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for transporting data including a first add drop multiplexer (ADM) configured to receive non Time Division Multiplexing (non-TDM) traffic and to encapsulate the non-TDM traffic as an embedded payload within a SONET synchronous transport signal (STS) frame. A first synchronous optical network (SONET) ring may be coupled to the first ADM and an optical cross connect module may at least partially interconnect the first SONET ring and a second SONET ring. The optical cross connect module may be configured to pass the SONET STS frame, having an embedded non-TDM data as a payload, to the second SONET ring without de-encapsulating the non-TDM traffic from the SONET STS frame. The ADM may be capable of converting data formats that comply with Open System Interconnection (OSI) layers 2, 3, and 4 into an STS format.