Abstract: A method for managing connections between at least one client and at least one data server, said method comprises: (a) providing an intermediary connection apparatus comprising connections to a plurality of clients over a WAN or a LAN environment, said apparatus comprising memory buffers and at least one connection to each of said at least one data server(s) being continuously open; (b) establishing a client network connection between said apparatus and one of said clients via a network; (c) receiving a client request to receive a response from a data server over said client network connection; (d) forwarding to the data server either a request or a partial request; (e) limiting the size of the response or partial response that the server is allowed to provide at a given time to said apparatus in response to said client request; and (f) buffering data encoding requests and responses in said apparatus according to data traffic load over the connection to said server and to said client, respectively.

Abstract: A method for managing connections between at least one client and at least one data server, said method comprises: (a) providing an intermediary connection apparatus comprising connections to a plurality of clients over a WAN or a LAN environment, said apparatus comprising memory buffers and at least one connection to each of said at least one data server(s) being continuously open; (b) establishing a client network connection between said apparatus and one of said clients via a network; (c) receiving a client request to receive a response from a data server over said client network connection; (d) forwarding to the data server either a request or a partial request; (e) limiting the size of the response or partial response that the server is allowed to provide at a given time to said apparatus in response to said client request; and (f) buffering data encoding requests and responses in said apparatus according to data traffic load over the connection to said server and to said client, respectively.

Abstract: A network element and a method for propagating data packet from an input port of a network element to an output port of the network element, the network element comprising a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports interconnected by an optical switch, the method including the steps of: receiving the data packet at an input port; processing the data packet to determine a destination output port out of the output ports of the network element; partitioning the data packet to a plurality of fixed sized cells; for each fixed sized cell of the data packet: optically transmitting in parallel optical signals to an optical switch, the optical signals being representative of all the bits of a fixed sized cell, switching the optical signals across the optical switch in view of the destination output port, during a single switching cycle, and converting the optical signals to electrical signals being representative of the fixed size cells; accumulating electrical signals being representative of fixed size

Abstract: The invention provides a network element and method for preventing a disorder of a sequence of data packets traversing a network. Each network element balances the traffic load among local paths across the network element by applying a distribution function such as a hashing function. Data packets that belong to the same class of flows are sent to the same local path across the network element.

Abstract: The invention provides a network element that simplifies the forwarding decision and the maintenance of optical paths by locally maintaining and selecting local paths across each network element. According to another aspect of the invention, the forwarding decision relating to data packets destined to output ports of egress elements of the network external routers by allocating a predefined wavelength for each output port such that the selection of a local path that leads to such an output port is performed by a wavelength conversion.

Abstract: A method for generating a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) signal to be propagated over an optical path and to optically amplified by a gain factor, the method including the step of: determining a level of input optical signals of different wavelengths to be multiplexed and sent over the optical path; generating a level correction signal, for compensating for a correlation between the gain factor and the level of the WDM signal; and multiplexing the level correction signal and the optical signals to generate the WDM signal.

Abstract: Network element and a method for propagating a data packet across a network. The network configured to accommodate a plurality of optical paths. At least one optical path includes a packet switched path and at least one optical path includes a circuit switched path. An optical path can include both a circuit switched path and an packet switched path. The distribution of data packet among the optical paths is based upon at least one of the following parameters: (i) the data packet flow; (ii) the ingress network element that received the data packet; (iii) the destination of the data packet; (iv) at least one predefined criterion. Usually, the selection of a selected optical path is preceded by a step of monitoring the propagation of data packets flows across the optical paths and determining whether the data packet flow fulfilled a predefined criterion. The selection is based upon the determination.

Abstract: A system and method for error correction of data packets of variable size to generate minimal sized encoded block to be transmitted over a network. The data packet is segmented to a plurality of sub blocks of predetermined length that undergo error correction encoding to generate encoded sub blocks and are combined with a encode indication to generate an encoded block of minimal length. The encoded block is transmitted over a network and received as a received encoded block by an error correction decoding system. The received encoded block is segmented and encoded according to the encode indication to generate a plurality of decoded sub blocks, the decoded sub blocks are combined to form a corrected data packet.