The front-pruned 3D-tree fault-tolerant networks

A class of fault-tolerant multistage interconnection networks, named the front-pruned 3D-tree networks (FPT), is presented. These ATM switching networks respond to the need to reduce the complexity o(N/sup 2/) of the 3D-tree network. It is shown that with an appropriate pruning level, the complexity of an FPT network can be o(Nlog/sub 2/N). The FPT networks ensure a higher terminal reliability than what is offered by other fault-tolerant networks of the same size. It is also shown that, with the pruning process the maximum throughput of the FPT networks is constant with network size. This means that large networks can be built without their throughput being degraded.