A method and apparatus is disclosed for interfacing an asynchronous
network with a synchronous network and in particular for efficiently
utilizing available bandwidth of a synchronous network transmit
opportunity. In one embodiment asynchronous traffic arrives via an
asynchronous network at a network device, such as a switch, for
transmission over a synchronous network. The traffic is parsed into cells
and after switching, a reassembly unit is provided for processing one or
more cells buckets. Write operations occur based on an ingress pointer
while read operations are controlled by an egress pointer. Upon
occurrence of a transmit opportunity on the synchronous network, the
entire bandwidth of the transmit opportunity is utilized by loading
awaiting cells from bucket memory on to the synchronous network.
Sufficient cells are stored in memory between the memory locations
identified by the ingress pointer and the egress pointer to insure total
utilization of transmit opportunity bandwidth.