High-speed data transfer rates are provided between a central office and customer premise equipment with a multiplexer that is interposed between the central office and the customer premise equipment, and that functions as a remote access node. The annealing apparatus includes a plurality of isolated annealing chambers, wherein each of the annealing chambers has a heating plate positioned in a sealed processing volume, a cooling plate positioned in the processing volume, and a substrate transfer mechanism positioned in the processing volume and configured to transfer substrates between the heating plate and the cooling plate. Then, a network address is assigned to each of the nodes, in which the network address includes a cluster ID and a node ID, the cluster ID is used for identifying the clusters and for routing a packet between the clusters, and the node ID is used for identifying the nodes in each of the clusters and for routing a packet in the cluster. A system for carrying out the method is also disclosed.