Inventors:
Jay Jie Deng - Union City CA
Lian S. Xie - Fremont CA
Jun Yu - Milpitas CA
Assignee:
Advanced Communication Devices Cororation - Fremont CA
International Classification:
H04L 1256
Abstract:
A data frame switching apparatus has number data ports and a port traffic management unit for each port. Each port traffic management unit includes a physical layer unit for receiving and transmitting data frames, a serial shift register for temporarily storing a portion of each received data frame in serial data format, and a port controller for extracting each data frame's source and destination address from the portion of the data frame stored in the serial shift register. A crossbar switch connects any specified one of the data ports that is receiving a data frame to another one of the data ports so as to transmit the received data frame to a corresponding destination. A global traffic manager and lookup engine map the destination address of each received data frame to a corresponding destination port, determine the availability of the destination port, and when the destination port if available, send setup signals to the switch so as to connect the data port on which the data frame is being received to the destination port.
