A dynamic cell splitting copy network design for ATM multicast switching

Multicast switches have found many applications in communication networks. A common design of multicast switches is a tandem of a copy network and a point-to-point routing network. The occurrence of overflow is an inherent problem in copy networks when the total number of copy requests exceeds the network size. Also, cells could be blocked due to the head-of-line fanout blocking, so that the cell with larger fanout than the remaining size of the idle output ports will be blocked, which limits the network throughput. This paper presents a dynamic cell-splitting copy network architecture based on Lee's copy (Banyan) network design. The new design not only preserves the advantages in the original design, but also provides many new features, including the increased throughput and a preserved cell sequence. A simulation study is also presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed architecture.