Deflection Routing in Regular MNA Topologies
Paweł Gburzyński, Jacek Maitan · Journal of High Speed Networks · 1993
We introduce MNA (Multigrid Network Architecture) – a networking concept aimed at applications calling for very high transmission rates (of the order of gigabits per second). An MNA network is a collection of photonic switches linked by optical channels. A switch is responsible for relaying incoming packets along the best available routes to their destinations. Packets that cannot be relayed optimally are deflected, i.e., relayed along suboptimal paths. The technology for building MNA switches has been developed in Lockheed Palo Alto Research Lab, [20]-[22]. In this paper, we discuss the logical aspects of MNA, present a model for investigating the performance of MNA in regular topologies, and apply this model to a number of network configurations.