Data transmission system with multi-memory packet switch

A data transmission system comprising:

• a plurality of LANs interconnected by a hub;
• a plurality of LAN adapters within said hub connected to said LANs and a packet switch module, wherein a packet transmitted by any of said plurality of LAN adapters to said packet switch module includes a header containing at least a destination address of any of said plurality of LAN adapters to which said packet is to be forwarded, wherein said switch module comprises a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports, both being connected to said plurality of LAN adapters, wherein each input port and output port define a crosspoint within said switch module;
• a memory block located at each said crosspoint of said switch module, wherein said memory block includes a data memory unit adapted for storing at least one data packet;
• memory control means for determining from a header of a received data packet whether said packet is to be forwarded to an output port associated with said crosspoint and for storing said data packet into said data memory unit;
• data control means for causing at a clock time a data packet stored in a data memory unit of a memory block, among all memory blocks corresponding to said output port, to be transferred to said output port;
• and
• a configuration interface mechanism adapted for sending configuration data to said memory control means of said memory blocks, wherein a packet received by a plurality of input ports from an input adapter having a speed n times faster than an input adapter transmitting to a single input port is transferred to a corresponding plurality of output ports at a speed which is n times the transfer speed between one input port and one output port, wherein n is a number of the memory blocks which are located at the crosspoints.