The Gigabit per Second Isochronet Switch

This paper overviews the electronic and all-optical design and the gigabit per second electronic implementation of a switch based on the Isochronets highspeed network architecture. The absence of frame processing in the Isochronets architecture is core to the switch efficiency and multi-protocol support. The electronic design is low cost and uses simple off-the-shelf components, while the optical design can be realized with current optical devices. The switch interface is simple and provides novel services such as propagation of synchronization signals to upper protocol layers. The switch makes it possible the negotiation of Quality of Service (QoS) while promoting flexible resource sharing. The modular switch designs are scaleable in number of nodes and link speed. Using faster implementation technology, the electronic design can reach scores of gigabits per second, while the all-optical design can potentially operate at terabits per second