Apparatus and method for reducing data losses in a growable packet switch

Claim 1

A growable packet switch for switching packets of data from a plurality of input lines to a plurality of output lines, comprising: a plurality of input interfaces, each having an input port connected to a respective input line of said plurality of input lines, and an output port; a single stage distribution network for switching a plurality of I network input ports to a plurality of L network output ports thereof; each of said input interfaces having a store therein for holding a packet of data until the packet of data is routed to the network; each of said plurality of input interface output ports fanning out to a respective group of F of said I network input ports of said single stage distribution network; said single stage distribution network having a plurality of P partitions, where P is an integer; a plurality of output modules, said output modules together having a plurality of inputs, each of said output module inputs connected to respective network output port of said plurality of L network output ports, and together having a plurality of outputs, each of said output module outputs connected to a respective output line of said plurality of output lines; an out-of-band controller having a plurality of busy-idle memory units equal in number to the number of partitions P, each of said busy-idle memory units controls the routing of data packets through its respective partition; each data packet routing request that is made in an i-th time interval has a route determined in the i-th time interval, the next subsequent time interval or is dropped; and each partition of said P partitions having at least one path that is connectable to provide a connection for a data packet from each of the plurality of input lines to a respective output line of the plurality of output lines.