link capacity adjustment scheme (SDH) (LCAS)

The Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) is a protocol used to adjust asynchronous data to the SDH hierarchy in the Next Generation Synchronous Digital Hierarchy( NG-SDH).

The LCAS protocol operates between two network elements at the customer interface and determines which group members of a Virtual Concatenation Group( VCG) are used for transmission.

The LCAS protocol supports dynamic adjustment of transmission capacity to current demand. It allows carriers to add or remove individual Virtual Concatenation( VCAT) in a Virtual Concatenation Group (VCG). This allows the payload of a VCG to be fine-tuned to the actual bandwidth available. The adjustment is non-disruptive for the bearer customer. LCAS is defined in ITU Recommendation G.7042 and contains all the necessary signaling mechanisms and path information that is communicated to the end points of the link.