High speed packet switches are essential elements in the high-performance integrated communication networks for providing multimedia services. This project in high speed switched networks can be divided into three categories: the development of a theoretical foundation for the evaluation and comparison of a very broad spectrum of high speed switching techniques, exploration of the principle of error correcting routing in high speed switched networks, and the study of fundamental properties governing traffic management in ATM networks in order to simplify network level management. We have been developing a theoretical foundation for the evaluation and comparison of the complexity of a very broad spectrum of high speed packet switching designs. We have developed a uniform approach to determining the growth of the switch complexity as a function of switch size for a given performance requirement. We are also studying the property of dual shuffle exchange switching network that makes use of the principle of error-correcting routing. Based on an error-correcting an self-routing algorithm, we have shown by analysis and simulation that the dual shuffle-exchange network can achieve the Shannon lower bound on switch complexity with arbitrarily small packet loss probability. A network node that incorporates traffic control policies that depend only on each individual input and output, but not on the details of the traffic distributions from inputs to outputs, is said to have the distribution-independent property . This is a fundamental property that is essential for simplification of network level traffic management. We have established this property for some switch designs. The goal of this part of this project is to clarify issues related to the distribution-independent property and to establish its feasibility for a generic output queued switch on a rigorous basis.
