Connectionless switching by asynchronous Banyan networks

Multistage networks built out of small switching elements with internal buffers, called asynchronous Banyan networks, are proposed in this paper to perform the switching function of variable-size packets in a connectionless network environment. These structures are suitable to be adopted both as the connectionless server of ATM switching nodes and as a switching node of a fully connectionless broadband network, such as a typical LAN/MAN environment. Asynchronous Banyan networks, which are provided with internal buffers in each switching element, exploit the packet self-routing technique by means of a self-routing tag attached to each packet. Thus, owing to such distributed processing capability, these networks are able to carry the loads typical of a broadband environment. Internal handshaking protocols are defined and different types of internal queueing strategies are studied for the Banyan networks