APPARATUS AND METHOD OF PROCESSING BANDWIDTH REQUIREMENTS IN AN ATM SWITCH

摘要

The ATM communication systems includes an ATM switch having input and output ports. Each input port is fed from an input port server and each of the output ports are arranged to feed an output port server. The input port servers include buffer stores, one for each of the output ports, to which data is transmitted through the switch. Each buffer store in the input port servers is arranged to interrogate the output ports server, with which it communicates before the transmission of data, to determine whether the output port server data handling capacity is available. The ATM communication system includes means for transmitting unicast traffic and multicast traffic. The means comprises an output time slot control means and scheduling means arranged to allocate a time slot for the transmission of each unicast traffic cell, and for calculating when a time slot is available for transmission of a multicast traffic cell. The output time slot control means includes a store for storing information identifying the time slot and for reserving that time slot for the transmission of a multicast traffic cell.