Fast Packet Technology for Future Switches

Abstract

New network services other than the traditional voice communications between people will be increasingly bursty in bandwidth needs and will require distributed processing and control. The new fast packet technology for transmission and switching is ideally matched to these future network service needs. In this paper, we give a high-level sketch of the evolution of fast packet switch technology starting with the first packet switches and ending with some architectures that offer promise as potential switching vehicles for Broadband ISDN. We shall be using examples of AT&T experimental switch architectures to illustrate the evolution and technical capabilities.