Design of a high performance multicast ATM switch for B-ISDN

In the future many networking services for B-ISDN such as video transmission, teleconferencing etc. will require multicast support. Usually a multicast switch is formed by cascading a copy network and a routing network. This paper proposes a multicast ATM switch design based on the reverse knockout switch. No copy network is needed. It allows unicast and multicast packets to coexist without competing. The bus interface in the knockout switch is restructured to implement the copy and routing function. A parallel buffer strategy is adopted to achieve high performance. A fast table lookup with CAM technique is used to achieve cell duplication and cell routing easily. A special relay ring controller is introduced to solve the contention problem associated with multiple cells destined for the same output link. The switch design has a simple topology and operating principle and is easy to implement. A performance analysis shows that this switch architecture achieves low cell loss rate together with high throughput.