Abstract: A method of operating in a point-to-multipoint communication system with a base station and a plurality of remote stations, wherein the communication system enables transmission of data in a multicast mode with different Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) levels, carries switched point-to-point traffic without compromising the switched nature of the traffic in a broadcast environment, contains circuits for evaluating the Remote Station Identifier (RSI) and switch field tag portions of received Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) cells using a series of registers to match the RSI and the unique remote address, and embeds multicast address data capable of identifying intended remote stations at varying QAM levels.

Abstract: A collection of methods of operating in a point-to-multipoint communication system with a base station and a plurality of remote stations, wherein the communication system maximizes the number of potential connections to each multipoint destination through the creation of an extended Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) cell that examines the switch tag and generates an embedded output channel identifier, wherein the output channel identifier is utilized as an index for broadcast domains and selection of a Temporary Remote Path Identifier (TRPI) comprised of a series of remote station identifiers.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for a computer system is used for implementing an extended distributed recovery block fault tolerance scheme. The computer system includes a supervisory node, an active node and a standby node. Each of the nodes has a primary routine, an alternate routine and an acceptance test for testing the output of the routines. Each node also includes a device driver, a monitor and a node manager for determining the operational configuration of the node. The supervisory node coordinates the operation of the active and standby nodes. The primary and alternate routines are implemented with an application task through a plurality of agent objects operating as finite state machines. A reliable data link extends between the monitors of the active and standby nodes.