Abstract: A method and apparatus are disclosed for dynamically adapting the play-out delay for voice packets transmitted over a local area network using the Ethernet standard as an access mechanism. It has been observed that the distribution of voice packet delays in a LAN (shared by voice and data traffic) follows a log-normal distribution. An adaptive algorithm is disclosed to estimate the parameters of the log-normal distribution and to apply a dynamic play-out delay to improve the quality of packetized voice conversations, quantified by minimum delay and packet loss. For example, the size, B, of the play-out buffer can be established to ensure that the packet loss does not exceed one percent (1%). The distribution parameters are continuously updated and the size of the play-out buffer, B, is modified at the beginning of every calibration interval according to the illustrative 99% percentile of the delay distribution.

Abstract: A digital cellular/personal communications service (PCS) application incorporates a logical link connection (LLC) server. In this approach, there are two ATM connections in the path of an AAL-2 connection: one between a base station and the LLC Server and the other between the LLC Server and a vocoder group. All LLCs from, or to, a given base station use a common ATM connection irrespective of the vocoder used at the other end. Similarly, all LLCs from, or to, a given vocoder group use a common ATM connection irrespective of the destination base station at the other end. At the LLC Server, LLC packets from many base stations destined for the same vocoder group are extracted and bundled into the ATM connection between the LLC Server and the destination vocoder group. Similar treatment is given to the packets originating at vocoders and destined for base stations.