A buffered statistical data fork

Recently, Cruz (1990) proposed the Statistical Data Fork (SDF) as a multichannel switch supporting trunk groups in a broadband network. Routing error for a multichannel switch is the probability that a packet entering the switch does not exit the switch on its desired trunk group. aper studies variations of the basic SDF architecture in which the number of subchannels per link is K ≥ 2. This effect can be achieved by the inclusion of buffers into the architecture or by dilating the links of the switching network. We show that in some cases the routing error for K = 2 is smaller than for K = 1 by several orders of magnitude. We also consider the problem of assigning the output links to the trunk groups to minimize the routing error while constraining the size of each trunk group. Finally, we study the sensitivity of the routing error to changes in traffic rates.