Importance

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Abstract

The present invention relates to a switching fabric for a packet-switched communications network. Said switching fabric comprises a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports, and a plurality of switch elements (SE1-SE5) which are arranged in multiple stages and connected with each other into a switching fabric. Each switch element has a plurality of inputs and outputs and each switch element routes a data packet present at its given input to at least one of its outputs on the basis of routing information (SRT) carried by said data packet. In order to reduce internal blocking in the switch, each switch element (SE1) in at least the first switching stage is formed by a routing network element (RE.sub.1) and a shift network element (SHE.sub.1), connected in series with each other so that the ith output of the routing network element is connected to the ith input of the shift network element, whereby (1) each routing network element routes the data packets according to preset, fixed rules on the basis of the routing information carried by the data packet, and (2) each shift network element shifts the data packet present on its ith input to its jth output, whereby the indices i and j are paired so that (a) within a given time slot, all the values of j are different from each other within a given shift network element, and (b) within a given time slot, a different value of j is assigned to each of the same-valued i's used in the different shift network elements.

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First Claim