Patent ID: 7756013

Claim:
A system comprising: first and second switch routes; a plurality of input selectors, each for receiving an input line and for connecting the received input line to one of the two switch routes; a switch section for each one of the two switch routes, each of the switch sections including: N input ports, N output ports, and N buffers that each further include M priority queues to store data units having different priorities, where M is greater than or equal to two; an output selector to receive first and second data units, where the first data unit is from the M priority queues of the N buffers of the first switch section, and the second data unit is from the M priority queues of the N buffers of the second switch section; and a controller to: generate a system switching signal, and receive status signals from both of the switch sections, where a particular status signal from a particular switch section, of the switch sections, includes information relating to a data unit storing status of the M priority queues of the particular switch section and, based on the status signals, control the output selector to selectively output one of the first or second received data units.