Fault-tolerant switch architecture

摘要

A computer network employs a fault-tolerant or redundant switch architecture. The network includes redundant data paths coupling end nodes and switches. Fault-tolerant repeaters (FTRs) can be stand-alone devices or can be incorporated into the switches. Using error detection, the FTR checks to see if the data is good on all paths. If the data received on one path is "bad" and the data is "good" on another path, the FTR transmits the "good" data in place of the "bad" data. For any switch, a pair of incoming ports may be configured as redundant incoming ports and a pair of outgoing ports may be configured as redundant outgoing ports.