Tellabs Operations, Inc.

Starent Networks Corporation

Cisco Technology, Inc.

Steven R Dunstan

Parvez Munir Khan

Frank K Bradbury

Vishal Sharma

Timothy Y Chow

Charles E Rohrs

Joseph Cerra

A method includes receiving information at an interface circuit and providing the information from the interface circuit to a processing circuit through a direct communications path between the interface circuit and a processing circuit, which processes the information received from the interface circuit. The method further includes providing the information from the interface circuit to the processing circuit via a crosspoint switch in response to a failure of the direct communications path, wherein the direct communication does not pass through the crosspoint switch.

Redundancy in voice and data communications systems

Apparatus is used in communicating in a data and voice communication system. The apparatus includes a line card and a crosspoint switch in communication with the line card. The apparatus also includes an accelerator card in communication with the line card and the crosspoint switch. The crosspoint switch is configured to provide a redundant communications path between the line card and the accelerator card.

Redundancy in voice and data communications system

A low-cost, high-speed data switching system and method uses several parallel switching systems or fabrics. In one of various embodiments, for example, the constituent data flows in a data stream can be selectively routed to a switching fabric that has the lowest input data rate. Data flows can be assigned to the various switching fabrics so as to balance the amount of data passing through each parallel system. Data flows can be re-assigned on an as-needed basis to insure maximum throughput. In the case where a data flow initially routed into one switching fabric must be re-routed to a different fabric, the ordering of data packets can be preserved by withholding the transfer of packets through the second fabric until the packets previously sent into the first fabric have cleared. Methods and apparatus of the present invention find application to parallel computing as well.

Method and apparatus to switch data flows using parallel switch fabrics

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Beverly, MA, United States of America

Steven R Dunstan