Patent ID: 7519054

Claim:
A multi-stage switch comprising: at least one ingress switching module to receive data packets, to switch the data packets, to generate frames from the switched data packets, and to form wavelength division multiplexed signals from the frames, wherein said at least one ingress switch module comprises at least one ingress queuing engine operatively connected to transmit the data packets to at least one crossbar switch plane, which is operatively connected to switch the data packets to at least one ingress crossbar data element, wherein data transfer is controlled by an ingress scheduler, wherein said at least one ingress switch module further includes a multicast lookup table, the multicast lookup table used to identify egress switching modules associated with a multicast data packet, wherein the multicast lookup table is also used to determine type of replication associated with the multicast data packet, wherein multicast data packets are assigned a multicast identification, and wherein the multicast lookup table identifies the associated egress switching modules and the type of replication to be used based on the multicast identification; a core switching module operatively connected to receive the wavelength division multiplexed signals from the at least one ingress switching module and to switch the wavelength division multiplexed signals; and at least one egress switching module to receive the wavelength division multiplexed signals from the core switching module, to extract the frames from the wavelength division multiplexed signals, to extract the data packets from the frames, to switch the data packets, and transmit the data packets, wherein said at least one ingress switching module and said at least one egress switching module are capable of replicating multicast data packets.