Patent ID: 7346049

Claim:
A method of scheduling connections in a multi-stage switch, the multi-stage switch comprising two input stage switching elements, two output stage switching elements, and two center stage switching elements coupling the two input stage switching elements to the two output stage switching elements, each of the respective switching elements having non-blocking properties for incoming traffic, including multicast traffic, the method comprising: scheduling a configured set of input/output connections including multicast connections between the two center stage switching elements according to a scheduling pattern in order to minimize a first difference in the numbers of connections from a common input stage switching element scheduled for the respective center stage switching elements and to minimize a second difference in the numbers of connections to a common output stage switching element scheduled for the respective center stage switching elements, resulting in the non-blocking properties of the respective switching elements being retained; generating parameters from the configured set of input/output connections, each of the parameters specifying a number of connections from one of the two input stage switching elements to at least one of the two output stage switching elements; and generating the scheduling pattern from the generated parameters, such that the scheduling pattern includes scheduling parameters having values identifying even and odd parameters of the generated parameters and specifying one of the two center stage switching elements for each of the odd parameters.