SWITCHING SYSTEM

摘要

A switch (10) for controlling the switching of communication paths in communication equipment, such as telephone networks, is connected to controllers (11, 12, 13) via a divider unit (14). The divider unit (14) divides some or all of the resources of the switch (10) into a plurality of switch resource sets, and those switch resource sets are then associated with respective ones of the controllers (11, 12, 13). This has the effect of enabling each switch resource set to act as an independent sub-switch, with each controller (11, 12, 13) then controlling a corresponding sub-switch. This division of the resources of the switch (10) allows different control architectures to be operated simultaneously. This permits different virtual networks to be constituted on the same physical network. Any one of the controllers (11, 12, 13) has access only to the switch resource set or sets allocated to that controller (11, 12, 13). The controllers (11, 12, 13) are connected to the divider unit (14) by corresponding divider control interfaces (15, 17, 18) and the divider unit (14) is connected to the switch (10) by a switch control interface (15).