ATM multicast switch with separate routes for unicast cells and multicast cells

An ATM multicast switch with separate routes for unicast and multicast cells is proposed. At the dividing controller, unicast cells are routed to the shared buffer, whereas multicast cells are sent to the input buffer of the copy network. Both cells are sent by separate routes to the gathering controller in front of the point-to-point routing network. It is shown that our proposed multicast switch can achieve smaller mean system delay, reducing excess load at the copy network and the routing network, compared to the conventional model consisting of a serial combination of a copy network and a routing network. We also consider the cell-loss probabilities of unicast and multicast cells for our model by computer simulation. (C) 1998 Scripta Technica.