A scalable recirculating shuffle network with deflection routing

We describe a high-speed optical wide area network (WAN) architecture called the multi-cylinder ShuffleNet (MCSN). Its basic topology is a recirculating shuffle exchange network with an all-optical data path from source to destination. The network capacity and performance is improved by augmenting it with multiple parallel copies of the original topology called routing cylinders. This approach avoids the use of a global request/acknowledge mechanism by matching the rate at which packets can be input into the network to the rate at which packets can be transmitted through the network (without congestion). Packets are dynamically stored within the switching nodes (using only fixed delay line elements) and the links of the network, and congestion control within the network is handled by routing blocked packets onto alternative routing cylinders. The architecture is easily scalable, designed for bit-synchronous, packet asynchronous traffic and utilizes a simple distributed control scheme. Simulation results which demonstrate these features are given.