the following description is presented to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention . descriptions of specific embodiments and applications are provided only as examples and various modifications will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art . the general principles described herein may be applied to other embodiments and applications without departing from the scope of the invention . thus , the present invention is not to be limited to the embodiments shown , but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the principles and features described herein . for purpose of clarity , details relating to technical material that is known in the technical fields related to the invention have not been described in detail . the present invention operates in the context of a data communication network including multiple network elements . a system of the present invention provides an efficient , low - latency coding scheme for mapping 8b / 10b based protocols over a dwdm network . the network may be configured to use protocols such as fibre channel or gigabit ethernet , for example . referring now to the drawings , and first to fig2 , a link connection 20 of the present invention may provide interconnection for fibre channel to gigabit ethernet on a user gigabit medium independent interface , for example . the connection is transparent to users , applications , and other upper layer protocols of the fibre channel links . an application or device 22 sends data over the fibre channel link to a gigabit ethernet channel that can carry multiple lower - speed source application protocols . the 10 - bit code of the 8b / 10b scheme is used by fibre channel as part of the protocol signaling . since the 10 - bit control characters are a part of the protocols , they must be carried through as well as the user data . the 8b / 10b code provides a potential 1024 code words for signaling . a convention of kid with numbers is used to indicate the data . the 8 - bit 256 user data is represented by dxx . y , other control codes are represented by kxx . y where xx is from 0 to 31 and y is from 0 to 7 . for example , d28 . 5 represents 10b code 0011110010 or 1100000010 depending on the code disparity . the 8b / 10b based protocol uses a 10 - bit domain data as a part of the protocol signaling called ordered set . an ordered set is a 4 - byte transmission word which has a special character as its first transmission character . an ordered set may be a frame delimiter , a primitive signal , or a primitive sequence . ordered sets are used to distinguish control information from data . in fibre channel , the ordered set has four symbols . for example , idle consists of k28 . 5 + d21 . 4 + d21 . 5 + d21 . 5 . the ordered set may be any number and combination of k and d symbols . the fibre channel 8b / 10b coded signal is 4 - byte aligned . in every aligned 4 bytes block only the first byte can be a control character . thus , in the decoded 8b / 10b data stream , for every aligned 4 bytes ( 32 bits ) data block , only a single bit is needed to identify whether or not its first byte is a control character . the 8b / 10b decoded 4 - byte ( 32 bits ) aligned fibre channel data is mapped into a 33 - bit code group . four bytes of data directly copy from fibre channel data and a one bit control flag is copied from the first byte ( fig3 ). as shown in fig4 , eight 33 - bit code groups construct a 33 - byte block . fig5 shows the contents of the newly formed 33 - byte block . the first byte of the 33 - byte block consists of eight control bits : bit 0 is the control bit of the 1 st 33 - bit group ; bit 1 is the control bit of the 2 nd 33 - bit group ; bit 2 is the control bit of the 3 rd 33 - bit group ; bit 3 is the control bit of the 4 th 33 - bit group ; bit 4 is the control bit of the 5 th 33 - bit group ; bit 5 is the control bit of the 6 th 33 - bit group ; bit 6 is the control bit of the 7 th 33 - bit group ; and bit 7 is the control bit of the 8 th 33 - bit group . the 2 nd to 5 th bytes of the 33 - byte block are the 4 data bytes of the 1st 33 - bit group ; 6 th to 9 th bytes of the 33 - byte block are the 4 data bytes of the 2 nd 33 - bit group ; 10 th to 13 th bytes of the 33 - byte block are the 4 data bytes of the 3 rd 33 - bit group ; 14 th to 17 th bytes of the 33 - byte block are the 4 data bytes of the 4 th 33 - bit group ; 18 th to 21 st bytes of the 33 - byte block are the 4 data bytes of the 5 th 33 - bit group ; 22 nd to 25 th bytes of the 33 - byte block are the 4 data bytes of the 6 th 33 - bit group ; 26 th to 29 th bytes of the 33 - byte block are the 4 data bytes of the 7 th 33 - bit group ; and 30 th to 33rd bytes of the 33 - byte block are the 4 data bytes of the 8 th 33 - bit group . based on the transport layer bandwidth , n 33 - byte blocks are assembled into an ethernet packet . for example , if the transporting layer is gigabit ethernet , n is set equal to 9 or 10 . by selecting a different value of n , the same scheme can support 1 fc - 1x over ge , 10 fc - 1x , or 5 fc - 2x over 10ge or oc192 , 2fc - 1x or 1 fc - 2x over oc48 , for example . fig6 is a flowchart illustrating a process of the present invention for using 32b / 33b block code mapping for fiber channel over gigabit ethernet or sonet encapsulation . the 8b / 10b 4 - byte aligned fibre channel data is first mapped into a 33 - bit code group ( step 30 ) ( fig3 and 6 ). a 33 - byte block is then constructed with eight of the 33 - bit code groups ( step 32 ) ( fig4 and 6 ). n 33 - byte blocks are assembled into an ethernet packet ( step 34 ). it is to be understood that the block coding scheme of the present invention may be used with protocols other than fibre channel , without departing from the scope of the invention . furthermore , the system and method of the present invention may be used for data aggregation of coding protocols other than 8b / 10b . fig7 shows a system block diagram of computer system 38 that may be used to execute software of an embodiment of the invention . the computer system 38 includes memory 42 which can be utilized to store and retrieve software programs incorporating computer code that implements aspects of the invention , data for use with the invention , and the like . exemplary computer readable storage media include cd - rom , floppy disk , tape , flash memory , system memory , and hard drive . computer system 38 further includes subsystems such as a central processor 40 , fixed storage 44 , removable storage 46 , and one or more network interfaces 54 . other computer systems suitable for use with the invention may include additional or fewer subsystems . the system bus architecture of computer system 38 is represented by arrows 56 in fig7 . however , these arrows are only illustrative of one possible interconnection scheme serving to link the subsystems . for example , a local bus may be utilized to connect the central processor 40 to the system memory 42 . computer system 38 shown in fig7 is only one example of a computer system suitable for use with the invention . other computer architectures having different configurations of subsystems may also be utilized . communication between computers within the network is made possible with the use of communication protocols , which govern how computers exchange information over a network . as can be observed from the foregoing , the present invention has numerous advantages . the system is less complex than the 64b / 65b gfp , thus reducing gate count and implementation costs . the system further provides reduced latency for large fibre channel packets since there is no need to wait for the eof of the fibre channel packet on the encapsulation side . although the present invention has been described in accordance with the embodiments shown , one of ordinary skill in the art will readily recognize that there could be variations made to the embodiments without departing from the scope of the present invention . accordingly , it is intended that all matter contained in the above description and shown in the accompanying drawings shall be interpreted as illustrative and not in a limiting sense .