A fair and efficient multicast ATM switch based on deflection routing

We propose an efficient low cost multicast ATM switch which is fair to all inputs. The switch consists of a novel copy network followed by a routing network which ensures sequencing. Both the copy and routing networks are based on deflection routing. The switch requires O(log N) stages and can be designed for any arbitrarily low level of packet loss. Switching elements in both the copying and routing networks have O(1) bit complexity, making the overall bit level hardware complexity of the network O(N log N). The latency of the switch is proportional to the number of stages O(log N). Unlike other existing copy networks, our copy network drops packets in a fair manner and hence can provide QoS support. The switch is output queued and allows the delivery of multiple packets to the same destination during a time slot