APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR EFFICIENTLY COUPLING DIGITAL SIGNALS TO A COMMUNICATIONS MEDIUM IN INFORMATION PACKETS

An improved Packet Assembler/Disassembler (PAD) (200) optimizes the assembling of characters into packets for transmission over a packet network (150). The PAD is arranged to operably connect to and receive character asynchronous data from one or more terminal instruments (600) operating in either a block transfer mode or an echoplexing mode. Characters received by the PAD from a terminal instrument operating in an echoplexing mode are forwarded with no PAD delay. Characters received by the PAD from a terminal instrument operating in a block transfer mode are similarly forwarded with no PAD delay and in full packets with the exception of the last few characters of each block of characters which only partially fill their respective packets. And these partially filled packets are quickly forwarded in a time period which just exceeds the period required for the reception of a single character at the rate of data reception from the terminal instrument.