Patent ID: 8923288

Claim:
A network node, comprising: a plurality of port devices configured to receive input network traffic and to transmit output network traffic; a switch matrix that comprises a memory accessible through a plurality of matrix inputs and a plurality of matrix outputs; a plurality of matrix input processing modules configured to receive at least one fixed size block for the input network traffic, wherein each matrix input processing module is configured to store at least a portion of a received fixed size block in the memory through a respective matrix input; a plurality of source address generators, each configured to generate a source address for reading the memory through a respective matrix output; a static provisioning module configured to provide static switching information to the plurality of source address generators; a dynamic provisioning module configured to provide dynamic switching information to the plurality of source address generators; wherein the input network traffic comprises packet traffic and time division multiplex (TDM) traffic; wherein each fixed size block for the input network traffic comprises one of: packets from the packet traffic, without TDM traffic, at least one TDM portion from the TDM traffic, without packet traffic, or packets for the packet traffic and at least one TDM portion from the TDM traffic; wherein the plurality of matrix input processing modules are configured to store the packets and the at least one TDM portion in the memory; wherein the plurality of source address generators are configured to generate the source address through employment of the static switching information for reading the at least one TDM portion from the memory and to generate the source address through employment of the dynamic switching information for reading the packets from the memory; wherein the plurality of port devices are configured to receive the packets and the at least one TDM portion from the memory, through the plurality of matrix outputs, in at least one fixed size block for transmitting output network traffic; wherein the at least one fixed size block for the input network traffic and the at least one fixed size block for the output network traffic are a same size.