Patent ID: 7110669

Claim:
A switching system having an input and an output, the switching system further comprising: a first communications switch and a second communications switch connected by at least one communications link, comprising at least one channel, for transmitting a plurality of data units through said communications link to the output of the switching system; a common time reference (CTR); means for deriving the CTR from a Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) standard; wherein each of the communications switches is further comprised of a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports, each of the input ports connected to and receiving data units from the communications link over at least one of the channels, and each of the output ports connected to and transmitting data units to the communications link over at least one of the channels; wherein each of the communications switches has a switch controller, coupled to the CTR, the respective input ports, and the respective output ports; wherein each of the communications switches has an optical interconnection subsystem coupled to the respective switch controller, the respective input ports, and the respective output ports; wherein the CTR is divided into a plurality of contiguous periodic super cycles (SCs) each comprised of at least one time cycle (TC) each comprised of at least one time frame (TF); wherein the super cycle is one of a single UTC second, a predefined integer number of UTC seconds, and a fraction of one UTC second; wherein each of the switch controllers defines the coupling from each one of the respective input ports for data units received during any one of the time frames, on a respective one of the channels, for output during a predefined time frame to at least one selected one of the respective output ports on at least one selected respective one of the channels; and wherein each of the switch controllers is responsive to the CTR for configuring the optical interconnection subsystem wherein the optical interconnection subsystem is coupled to the input ports via a wavelength conversion subsystem.