Gigabit-per-second ATM packet switching with the growable switcharchitecture

摘要

The issue of gigabit ATM packet switching, which has potentialapplications in emerging B-ISDN as well as in the gigabit testbedexperiments, is discussed. The authors use the theory of a growableswitch architecture consisting of a column of small output packet switchmodules preceded by a memoryless cell distribution network. Thisarchitecture permits modular growth with the best possible(output-queuing) delay-throughput performance for arbitrary trafficdistributions. An optical star-coupler-based arrangement for the celldistribution network is proposed