Communication fabric for a cluster of network hosts
AssigneeAlcatel Lucent
InventorJoseph K. Kakande
Life of this patent
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Abstract
We disclose a communication system in which a cluster of network nodes is interconnected using an optical interconnect and an electrical switch engine. A bidirectional communication channel between any two of the network nodes can be set up using two bidirectional optical links established through the optical interconnect and one bidirectional electrical link configured to connect the ends of the two bidirectional optical links through the switch engine. The optical interconnect has a structure that enables the communication system to be (re)configurable for a desired level of oversubscription. Some embodiments of the communication system can advantageously be used in a data-center network.
Claims20
An apparatus comprising:
- an optical interconnect having N first ports and M second ports and configured to connect any of the N first ports and any of the M second ports in a manner that supports a respective bidirectional data flow between a pair of connected ports therein, wherein the optical interconnect is configurable to support at most M bidirectional data flows for a subset of the N first ports, where M and N are positive integers, N>M, and M is greater than one;
- and
- an electrical switch engine connected to the M second ports of the optical interconnect and configured to electrically connect any of the M second ports and any other of the M second ports in a manner that supports a respective bidirectional data flow between a pair of connected second ports therein;
- and
- wherein the apparatus is configured to support a bidirectional data flow between any two of the N first ports using a respective communication channel established through the optical interconnect and the electrical switch engine.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.