Fast Packet Switch Architectures and the Tandem Banyan Switching Fabric

We first present a brief review of the various fast packet switch architectures proposed so far. We then introduce a new space-division switch architecture based on banyan interconnection networks, called the Tandem Banyan Switching Fabric. It consists of placing banyan networks in tandem, offering multiple paths from each input to each output, overcoming in a very simple way the effect of blocking in banyan networks. It is shown to be simpler and to perform better than the Batcher-banyan and buffered- banyan switching fabrics, and to perform as well as space-division architectures offering N2 disjoint paths (such as the Knockout switching fabric) while remaining considerably simpler.