Patent ID: 7130301

Claim:
Data transmission system having a plurality of Local Area Networks (LANs) interconnected by a hub including a plurality of LAN adapters respectively connected to the plurality of LANs, the data transmission system comprising: a packet switch interconnecting the plurality of LAN adapters wherein a packet transmitted by any one of the plurality of LAN adapters to the packet switch includes a header containing at least an address of the adapter to which the packet is forwarded and two bytes in which the first byte contains an identification field (unicast, multicast) and the second byte contains a module address field when the packet switch comprises several packet switch modules, the packet switch includes a plurality of input ports and a corresponding plurality of output ports both being respectively connected to the plurality of LAN adapters, each pair of input port and output port defining a cross point; the packet switch comprises: a plurality of memory blocks, each memory block associated with one of said cross points for storing any data packet which is received from the input port corresponding to the cross point and which is to be forwarded to the Output port corresponding to the cross point, and a plurality of schedulers, each scheduler associated with one of said output ports for selecting a memory block among all memory blocks corresponding to the output pout and causing the memory block to forward the stored data packet to the output port when predetermined criteria are met.