A method and apparatus for creating a computerized market for used and collectible goods by use of a plurality of low cost posting terminals and a market maker computer in a legal framework that establishes a bailee relationship and consignment contract with a purchaser of a good at the market maker computer that allows the purchaser to change the price of the good once the purchaser has purchased the good thereby to allow the purchaser to speculate on the price of collectibles in an electronic …

A fiber optic access node has input and output fibers terminating at a housing. A module is retractably insertable into the housing to automatically lock into a position in which an output zone of the module aligns with the output fiber and input zone of the module aligns with the input fiber. The input and output zones may be those of fiber optic passive elements such as a bypass fiber, a fiber tap, a fiber extension loop or a wavelength division multiplexed device, or may be those of an active…

A method and apparatus for adjusting an oscillator in a network for correcting frequency drift is disclosed. Nodes in the network exchange time stamp messages with each other. The time stamp messages contain the time the stamp message is transmitted, node measurement value of an interval and an uncertainty value for the nodes estimation of the interval. By exchanging measurements of common intervals, nodes can determine how far their oscillators have drifted from the correct oscillating frequenc…

A semiconductor memory produced in a unipolar technology includes a cell which has a pair of inversion capacitors with one terminal of each capacitor connected to one of a pair of bit/sense lines, the other terminal of each capacitor is coupled to a source of charges by a pulse from a word line. The charges produced from the source may be in the form of pulses injected into the capacitors. To provide a word organized array of these cells, each word includes a source of charges produced at the su…

A method of communicating over a network of nodes is disclosed. According to the method, it is determined whether a first node forms part of an interconnected sub-network within the network. Broadcast slots are assigned to the first node if the first node is part of the sub-network. The first node is permitted to use the assigned broadcast slots to broadcast data to other nodes. Nodes within one hop of the first node but not forming part of the sub-network are permitted to use an assigned broadc…

The invention relates to a process for transmission of data via a communication network to a terminal, and a network node for performance of the process. The data are transmitted to the terminal via the network node which can be connected with two or more terminals. On the network side at the network node for the transmission of data, a data stream is received which consists of useful data and protocol data. The network node removes the majority of the protocol data from the data stream received…

Delay that a packet experiences in a network node is measured by employing a single local time signal in the node, and by separating a time stamp update function into a network node entry stamp function and a network node exit time stamp function. The node entry time stamp function is to generate a packet originate time value referenced to the local time signal value upon the packet entering the node. This packet originate time value is inserted into a packet header time stamp field to be transp…

A communication network, for transmitting message signals, comprising a plurality of routing nodes and a method for routing message signals through the network are disclosed. The network comprises a plurality of the routing nodes interconnected in stages. Each routing node includes a memory for storing a destination portion of a message signal. Upon subsequent recall of the stored destination portion, a previous route can be reestablished and a message signal absent the destination portion trans…

A load balancing circuit arrangement for use with a packet switching node. The packet switching node processes applied data packets containing routing tag signals indicative of the output port destinations to which the data packets are addressed, and routes these packets to the identified output ports. The present invention a load balancing circuit coupled to the packet switching node which monitors the output port addresses of the applied data packets and monitors the number of data packets add…

A method for providing a node address uniquely identifies a process to be separately addressed and dispatched in a uniprocessor or multiprocessor environment. A single processor (14) identified by a unique primary node may include a single node of multiple processes (50), multiple subnodes of processes which do not replicate all of the processes in the subnode, or multiple subnodes with multiple processes replicated in each of said subnodes. Multiple processors (14), (64) and (66) may be joined …