Network with a fast-switching optical core providing widely varying flow-rate allocations

摘要

Multiple switch planes, each having meshed bufferless switch units, connect source nodes to sink nodes to form a communications network. Each directed pair of source and sink nodes has a first-order path traversing a single switch unit in a corresponding switch plane and multiple second-order paths each traversing two switch units in one of the remaining switch planes. To reduce processing effort and minimize requisite switching hardware, connectivity patterns of source nodes and sink nodes to the switch planes are selected so that each pair of source node and sink node connects only once to a common switch unit. Widely-varying flow rates may be allocated from each source node to the sink nodes. To handle frequent changes of flow-rate allocations, in order to follow variations of traffic distribution, a high-throughput scheduling system employing coordinated multiple scheduler units is provided in each switch plane.

主权项

1. A communications network comprising:
a plurality of switch units arranged in a plurality of switch planes, each switch plane comprising a set of switch units interconnected in a full mesh; a plurality of source nodes, each source node connecting to one of the switch units in said each switch plane; and a plurality of sink nodes, each sink node connecting to one of the switch units in said each switch plane; wherein: each pair of source node and sink node connects only once to a same switch unit among said plurality of switch units; and said each source node shares with a selected sink node among said plurality of sink nodes a source controller configured to: receive a flow-rate-allocation request from a data source, said flow-rate-allocation request specifying a target sink node and a requisite flow rate; determine a number of time slots in a predefined time-slotted frame corresponding to said requisite flow-rate allocation; and select a preferred switch plane among said plurality of switch planes.