Abstract
This paper proposes a 3-stage broadband packet switch archi- tecture with more than 16,000 ports for a future central office. The switch is constructed by interconnecting many independent switch modules of small size which can be implemented using modifications of various well-studied switch fabric designs. Mul- tiple paths are provided for each input-output pair, and the tech- nique of channel grouping is used to decrease delay and increase throughput. A datagram packet routing approach is adopted in order to eliminate table lookup that will be required by virtual- circuit routing. Ways of guaranteeing the sequence integrity of packets are discussed. We estimate from our performance anal- yses that switches with acceptable performance of 32,768 ports can be constructed based on switch fabrics of no more than 128 ports.

This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit: