Patent ID: 7710859

Claim:
A fault-tolerant router, comprising: a first router matrix card, said first router matrix card receiving N parity encoded input digital audio data streams and generating, from said N parity encoded input digital audio data streams, a first set of M parity encoded output digital audio streams, wherein M and N are integers and M is different from N; a second router matrix card, said second router matrix card receiving said N parity encoded input digital audio data streams and generating, from said N parity encoded input digital audio data streams, a second set of M parity encoded digital audio streams; an output card coupled to said first router matrix card and said second router matrix card, said output card receiving said first set of M parity encoded output digital audio streams from said first router matrix card and said second set of said M parity encoded output digital audio streams from said second router matrix card, providing, as an output therefrom, a selected one of said first and second sets of M parity encoded output digital audio streams, and switching from said selected one of said first and second sets of M parity encoded output digital audio data streams to an unselected one of said first and second sets of M parity encoded output digital audio data streams based upon detecting a parity error in said selected one of said first and second sets of M parity encoded output digital audio data streams regardless of whether a parity error is present in said unselected one of said first and second sets of M parity encoded output digital audio data streams.