The tradeoff between cost and reliability in packet switching multistage interconnection networks

The authors present the performance results of the generalized shuffle network (GSN), the multipath multistage interconnection network (MMIN), and an interconnection network proposed by the authors in a packet communication environment with the focus on cost analysis and reliability. The proposed interconnection pattern has the property of strong reroutability. There are eight paths between each input and each output; four of them are disjoint. The network is built up of four stages, with the same interconnection pattern at the first and third level. The novelity of the present work is the proposed fault-tolerant scheme, where multiple paths are achieved by adding extra links between stages, but not by intrastage links.