Newbridge Networks Corporation

Brian Wirth

Tom Duxbury

Wayne Burwell

Mark Wolff

Paul Crozier

Alain Brazeau

Merrill Arcand

Phil Worthington

LAN bridging redundancy

The invention provides a very fast distributed frame relay switch. Each switching element is tied to each other switching element using LAN like FDDI technology. Frame relay packets arrive into the switch via lower speed TDM based trunks and can either be switched locally within the same switching element or can be switched to a remote switching element via the FDDI bus. The switching elements themselves reside in a TDM based multiplexer, thus can utilize existing TDM interfaces.

Fast packet switch

A wiring hub for interconnecting a plurality of switching units, includes a plurality of interface modules for connection to respective external switching units in a dual-attached connection, and a dual FDDI ring interconnecting the interface modules. The interface modules include a switching element operable to bypass each switching unit or insert it on the ring in a dual-attached connection. The switching element automatically switches the interface module to its bypass state when a switching unit is disconnected from the wiring hub.

Fault tolerant FDDI wiring hub

Growing community of inventors

Ottawa, Canada

Brian Wirth