Multicasting in a growable packet (ATM) switch

A three stage packet switch architecture that uses a two stage, self-routing memoryless interconnection network to interconnect a third stage of smaller packet switches has been proposed by K. Y. Eng et al. (1988) and M. J. Karol and Chih-Lin I. (1989). The authors propose a new routing algorithm for this architecture that facilitates the multicasting of packets. Packets are duplicated as near to the switch´s outputs as possible. The authors also analyze the switch´s multicast performance, finding an overbound on the packet loss probability. The resulting overbound shows that a small increase in the expansion factor is sufficient to maintain a multicast packet loss probability that is equivalent to that obtained in the non-multicast case