Virtual networks on demand
Ian Leslie · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1998
Switchlets result from partitioning the resources, both physical and logical, of a switch. Each partition is a switchlet. Switchlets from different physical switches may be interconnected together in a manner consistent with the physical connectivity of the real switches. Each set of interconnected switchlets can be controlled by its own system; this control system is called a control architecture. Such an arrangement results in a set of virtual networks, each with its own control architecture. These control architectures may be identical, that is they may be different instances of the same control architecture, or they may be radically different. In this paper we examine how switchlets can be used to provide functionality which is either impossible or problematic to provide using conventional approaches to network control. While the examples being used will be based on ATM, it should be clear that application to any connection oriented network is straightforward. The switchlet technique is protected by patent.