Router having dual propagation paths for packets
AssigneeAT&T Corp.
InventorElizabeth Suet H. Tse-Au
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A router comprising an interface module (IM), having an optical path and an electrical path and a speed sensor coupled between an input of the router and an input of the IM. The speed sensor is adapted to receive a packet and detect a speed of the IM connection and in response to the speed of the IM connection being above a threshold value, the speed sensor provides the packet to the optical path of the IM and in response to the relative speed being below the threshold value, the speed sensor provides the packet to the electrical path of the IM.
Claims19
A router comprising:
- an interface module (IM), having an optical path and an electrical path;
- and
- a speed sensor coupled between an input of the router and an input of the IM, said speed sensor adapted to receive a packet and detect a speed of an IM connection and in response solely to the speed of the IM connection being above a threshold value, said speed sensor provides the packet to the optical path of said IM and in response solely to the speed of the IM connection being below the threshold value, said speed sensor provides the packet to the electrical path of said IM.
An Optoelectronic One-Architecture-Fit-All Scalable Reconfigurable (OOSR) router comprising:
- an interface module (IM) including an almost-all-optical path and an electrical path;
- an IM receiver adapted to receive said IM, said IM receiver comprising a speed sensor adapted to detect a speed of a packet entering the OOSR router, wherein in response solely to the speed of the packet entering the OOSR router detected by the speed sensor, said IM receiver adjusts a routing speed of the packet within the IM receiver by sending the packet though one of:
- the almost-all-optical path or the electrical path within the IM according to said speed of said packet;
- and
- an optical network interconnect module (NIM) coupled to both the almost-all-optical path and the electrical path of said IM.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.