  The next generation of ground-based gamma-ray observatories, such as e.g.
CTA, will consist of about 50-100 telescopes, and cameras with in total ~100000
to ~200000 channels. The telescopes of the core array will cover and effective
area of ~ 1 km2 and will be possibly accompanied by a large halo of smaller
telescopes spread over about 10 km2 . In order to make maximum use of the
stereoscopic approach, a very flexible inter-telescope trigger scheme is needed
which allows to couple telescopes that located up to ~1 km apart. The
development of a cost effective readout scheme for the camera signals exhibits
a major technological challenge. Here we present ideas on a new asynchronous
inter-telescope trigger scheme, and a very cost-effective, high-bandwidth
frontend to backend data transfer system, both based on standard Ethernet
components and an Ethernet front-end interface based on mass production
standard FPGAs.
