Patent attributes
A switch assembly having multiple blades in a chassis and a method of using that assembly to switch data is disclosed. A network switch assembly for network communications includes at least one fabric blade and a plurality of port blades. The at least one fabric blade has at least one switch having a plurality of data port interfaces, supporting a plurality of fabric data ports transmitting and receiving data, and a CPU interface, where CPU interface is configured to communicate with a CPU. The at least one fabric blade also has a CPU subsystem communicating with the CPU interface. Each of said plurality of port blades has at least one switch having a plurality of data port interfaces, supporting a plurality of port data ports transmitting and receiving data. The plurality of port data ports communicate with the plurality of fabric data ports along multiple paths such that data received by the port data ports is switched to a destination port of the network switch assembly along a specified path of the multiple paths based on a portion of the received data. In particular, the invention relates to configurations having five and nine blades to provide the requisite switching capacity.