Patent ID: 8774200

Claim:
A communications network comprising: a plurality of switch units arranged in a plurality of switch planes, each switch plane comprising a set of switch units interconnected in a full mesh; a plurality of source nodes, each source node connecting to one of the switch units in said each switch plane; and a plurality of sink nodes, each sink node connecting to one of the switch units in said each switch plane; wherein: each pair of source node and sink node connects only once to a same switch unit among said plurality of switch units; and said each source node shares with a selected sink node among said plurality of sink nodes a source controller configured to: receive a flow-rate-allocation request from a data source, said flow-rate-allocation request specifying a target sink node and a requisite flow rate; determine a number of time slots in a predefined time-slotted frame corresponding to said requisite flow-rate allocation; and select a preferred switch plane among said plurality of switch planes.