Patent ID: 7336612

Claim:
A switching system for a telecommunications network, comprising: a) a first stage having a plurality of input and two or more output sides, said output side concentrated relative to said input side; b) a second stage having input and output sides, said input side of said second stage coupled to said output side of said first stage and said output side of said second stage being comprised of a plurality of outputs, wherein said second stage is a non-recirculating sort and trap stage that receives a plurality of cells having unique and non-unique destination addresses in a first time slot, wherein said second stage further comprises a sorter substage for arranging said plurality of cells arriving at said second stage in said first time slot in a first order, said first order based upon said destination address and a priority for each one of said plurality of cells; and c) a trap buffer coupled to said second stage, wherein said trap buffer comprises a number of first-in-first-out queues in a range between L first-in-first-out queues to N first-in-first-out queues, where N is the total number of said input sides of said first stage and L is the total number of said output sides of said first stage, wherein for a plurality of cells arriving, at said second stage, said second stage places each cell having a unique destination address on a selected one of said plurality of outputs at a next subsequent time slot, ages each cell having a non-unique destination address during subsequent sequential time slots until said destination address becomes unique, and discards the oldest said aged cell if said destination address does not become unique at a subsequent time slot.