Back to results
US 10,476,816 B2Granted
Lite network switch architecture
AssigneeFacebook, Inc.
InventorsChe Kin Leung, Xu Wang, Zhiping Yao, Hans-Jergen Schmidtke, Lingjun Wu
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed embodiments include a network switch having a first number of switch elements and a second number of switch elements cross-connected to the first switch elements to passively route network traffic through the network switch in accordance with a predefined configuration.
Claims26
A network switch, comprising:
- a first plurality of switch elements;
- and
- a second plurality of switch elements cross-connected to the first plurality of switch elements to passively route network traffic through the network switch in accordance with a predefined configuration, wherein there exists corresponding one direct electrical connection between each of the first plurality of switch elements and each of the second plurality of switch elements;
- and
- a plurality of line cards, wherein each line card of the plurality of line cards includes one corresponding switch element from the first plurality of switch elements and one corresponding switch element from the second plurality of switch elements.
2 more elements
A network switch, comprising:
- a plurality of interconnected switch elements including:
- a pre-configured plurality of uplink ports;
- and
- a pre-configured plurality of downlink ports cross-connected to the uplink ports such that network traffic traversing the network switch is transported passively from the uplink ports to the downlink ports in accordance with pre-configured routes;
- wherein the plurality of interconnected switch elements includes a first group of switch elements and a second group of switch elements, there exists corresponding one direct electrical connection between each of the first group of switch elements and each of the second group of switch elements, and each line card of a plurality of line cards includes one corresponding switch element from the first group of switch elements and one corresponding switch element from the second group of switch elements.
2 more elements
A network switch comprising:
- a first plurality of switch elements;
- a second plurality of switch elements cross-connected to the first plurality of switch elements, wherein there exists corresponding one direct electrical connection between each of the first plurality of switch elements and each of the second plurality of switch elements;
- and
- a fabric cross-connect module including:
- a cross-connect module including:
- a plurality of line cards, wherein each line card of the plurality of line cards includes one corresponding switch element from the first plurality of switch elements and one corresponding switch element from the second plurality of switch elements, and
- at least one port pre-configured as an uplink port or a downlink port such that network traffic passively traverses the network switch from a pre-configured uplink port to a pre-configured downlink port;
- and
- a control module configured to power the cross-connect module and communicate control signals to the cross-connect module.
6 more elements
A method performed by a network switch of a computer network, the method comprising:
- receiving network traffic by a plurality of uplink ports of at least a portion of a plurality of switch elements of a plurality of line cards;
- passively routing the received network traffic to a plurality of downlink ports of at least a portion of the plurality of switch elements;
- wherein the plurality of interconnected switch elements includes a first group of switch elements and a second group of switch elements, there exists corresponding one direct electrical connection between each of the first group of switch elements and each of the second group of switch elements, and each line card of a plurality of line cards includes one corresponding switch element from the first group of switch elements and one corresponding switch element from the second group of switch elements.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.