Load balancing mechanisms in Clos packet switches

The size of a single-hop switching fabric is still limited by the technology and the fabrics available on the market that do not exceed the terabit capacity. A Clos fabric is an attractive solution to increase the switch capacity. In this paper, we propose the ways to transfer packets through the Clos network without blocking them. Namely, all the traffic would get through the switching fabric timely, as long as the switch outputs are not overloaded. We show that the rate and delay guarantees can be provided to the most sensitive applications.