Performance evaluation of a multicast datagram switch for broadband networks

This paper evaluates the traffic performance of a switch architecture for broadband networks that is capable of switching variable-length packets. The structure is connectionless, so that no bandwidth reservation takes place before the user packet, or datagram, is transferred. The interconnection network is assumed to be internally non-blocking and provided with input and output queues. The proposed architecture is capable of switching both point-to-point datagrams and multicast datagrams (packets addressing a set of outputs, rather than a single output). An option frequently adopted in ATM switches is also investigated, that is internal speedup both on the inputs and on the outputs of the switch. The performance of the switch is evaluated for different algorithms selecting the switching configuration