Patent ID: 8374177

Claim:
A network element for switching time-division multiplex signals comprising: a number of input ports, a number of output ports and a switch fabric interconnecting said input ports and said output ports; wherein said switching fabric is a cell based switch comprising one or more switch modules configured to switch fixed-length cells on the basis of addresses contained in cell headers of said cells; wherein said input ports comprise a segmentation device for segmenting timeslots of an input time-division multiplex signal into fixed-length cells and inserting into each cell a cell header that contains address information; wherein said output ports comprise a reassembly device for reassembling cells received from said switch fabric into an output time-division multiplex signal; wherein said address information contains a fabric address and a TDM address addressing a time slot of said output time-division multiplex signal; wherein said switch fabric switches said cells in accordance with said fabric address to a corresponding output port and; wherein said reassembly device reassembles said cells in accordance with said TDM address.