Patent ID: 8031682

Claim:
An apparatus for aggregating and switching traffic in a subscriber network comprising: an upstream traffic processing unit which stores a plurality of packets received from a plurality of downlinks with respect to each subscriber link, and transmits the packets stored with respect to each subscriber link to uplinks through scheduling; and a downstream traffic processing unit which broadcasts a packet received from the uplinks to the subscriber links via a broadcast bus connected to the respective subscriber links and determines with respect to each subscriber link whether to transmit the packet to subscriber links, wherein the upstream traffic processing unit which stores the plurality of packets received from the plurality of downlinks with respect to each of the subscriber link and the downstream traffic processing unit which broadcasts the packet received from the uplinks to the subscriber links via the broadcast bus connected to the respective subscriber links are processed separately from each other and without having any head-of-line blocking, and an internal path packet selection unit which determines which of the subscriber links each of the packets transmitted by the upstream traffic processing unit is destined for based on header information of each of the transmitted packets; and an internal path buffer unit which stores each of the transmitted packets to transmit them to the downstream traffic processing unit later if each of the transmitted packets is destined for one of the subscriber link.