Various leaf switch modules including optical network interfaces, electrical network interfaces and packet processors are provided. Some of the leaf switch modules as described herein are adapted for upward transmission of signals from external client devices to an electrical fabric, and include O/E converters; other leaf switch modules are adapted for downward transmission of signals from an electrical fabric to external client devices, and include E/O converters. A third type of leaf switch as described herein is adapted for both upward and downward transmission of signals, and includes both types of converter. In addition to the leaf switch modules themselves, an optoelectronic switch containing a plurality of those leaf switches is also described.

Embodiments of the invention describe flexible (i.e., elastic) data center architectures capable of meeting exascale, while maintaining low latency and using reasonable sizes of electronic packet switches, through the use of optical circuit switches such as optical time, wavelength, waveband and space circuit switching technologies. This flexible architecture enables the reconfigurability of the interconnectivity of servers and storage devices within a data center to respond to the number, size, type and duration of the various applications being requested at any given point in time.

Systems and methods are described for link aggregation and dynamic distribution of network traffic in a switching Clos network. In one embodiment of the present invention, a spine switch of a Clos network learns a first mapping of a Media Access Control (MAC) address of a client device to a first port of the spine switch and a second mapping of the MAC of the client device to a second port of the spine switch. The spine switch aggregates the first mapping and the second mapping as a link group for the MAC address of the client device in a MAC address table and distributes network traffic destined for the MAC address of the client device among members of the link group.

An example system can comprise an optical circuit switch. An input port module can receive an input optical signal comprising a plurality of input components, perform an optical to electrical to optical conversion on the input optical signal, multiplex the plurality of input components to an internal optical signal, and transmit first internal optical signal on a first internal waveguide. A switch module can receive the internal optical signal and transmit the transformed internal optical signal on a second internal waveguide according to a predefined control algorithm, which can permit any input component to be mapped to any frequency group and sent to any output component. An output port module can receive the internal optical signal, perform another optical to electrical to optical conversion on the internal optical signal, and demultiplex the internal optical signal to an output optical signal comprising a plurality of output components.

An electrical switching cluster system includes a plurality of input nodes, a plurality of intermediate nodes, and a plurality of output nodes. Each of the input nodes performs electrical switching on electrical signals to obtain a plurality of groups of first electrical signals, and converts one group of first electrical signals into a multi-wavelength first optical signal. Each of the intermediate nodes demultiplexes a plurality of first optical signals to obtain a plurality of groups of second optical signals, and multiplexes optical signals of different wavelengths in the plurality of groups of second optical signals to obtain a plurality of multi-wavelength third optical signals. Each of the output nodes converts one third optical signal into one group of second electrical signals, and performs electrical switching on a plurality of groups of second electrical signals to output the plurality of groups of second electrical signals through any output port.

A network (100) for a data center is disclosed. The network comprises computing resources (120), storage resources (110), and a switching apparatus (130). The switching apparatus (130) comprises a plurality of electrical switching components (140) configured to provide packet switching for traffic between computing resources or between computing and storage resources, and an optical switching fabric (150) configured to select an electrical switching component to provide packet switching between computing resources (120) and to provide connectivity between the plurality of electrical switching components (140) and the computing and storage resources (120, 110). Also disclosed is a method (400) for configuring a Virtual Performance Optimised Data Center (vPOD) in a network. The method comprises assigning computing resources of the network to the vPOD (410), assigning storage resources of the network to the vPOD (420) and assigning at least one of a plurality of electrical switching components of the network to provide packet switching for traffic between the computing resources of the vPOD or between the computing and storage resources of the vPOD (430). The method further comprises interconnecting the assigned computing and storage resources and the assigned at least one of a plurality of electrical switching components using an optical switching fabric (440).

An L-dimensional optoelectronic switch for transferring an optical signal from an input device to an output device, the optoelectronic switch includes: a plurality of leaf switches, each having a radix R, and arranged in an L-dimensional array, in which each dimension i has a respective size R.sub.i (i=1, 2, . . . , L), each leaf switch having an associated L-tuple of co-ordinates (x.sub.1, . . . , x.sub.L) giving its location with respect to each of the L dimensions; wherein each leaf switch is a member of L sub-arrays, each of the L sub-arrays associated with a different one of the L dimensions, and including: a plurality of R.sub.i leaf switches, whose co-ordinates differ only in respect of the i.sup.th dimension, each leaf switch having C client ports for connecting to an input device or an output device, and F fabric ports for connecting to spine switches; a plurality of S.sub.i spine switches, each having R fabric ports for connecting to the fabric ports of the leaf switches, and wherein, in a given sub-array each leaf switch in the sub-array is connected to each spine switch via an optical active switch.

Embodiments of the invention describe flexible (i.e., elastic) data center architectures capable of meeting exascale, while maintaining low latency and using reasonable sizes of electronic packet switches, through the use of optical circuit switches such as optical time, wavelength, waveband and space circuit switching technologies. This flexible architecture enables the reconfigurability of the interconnectivity of servers and storage devices within a data center to respond to the number, size, type and duration of the various applications being requested at any given point in time.

In response to a connectivity disruption in an underlying optical transport ring supporting a routing and packet switching topology, one or more of optical devices of the optical transport ring are modified to establish connectivity between spine nodes in different data centers to reroute communication between at least a subset of the leaf network devices so as to traverse an inter-spine route via the optical modified optical transport ring. That is, in response to a connectivity disruption in a portion of underlying optical transport ring, one or more optical devices within the optical transport ring are modified such that packets between at least a portion of the leaf devices are rerouted along optical paths between at least two of the spine network devices.

An apparatus having a plurality of multifiber connector interfaces, where some of these multifiber connector interfaces can connect to network equipment in a network using multifiber cables, has an internal mesh implemented in two tiers. The first is configured to rearrange and the second is configured to recombine individual fiber of the different fiber groups. The light path of each transmitter and receiver is matched in order to provide proper optical connections from transmitting to receiving fibers and complex arbitrary network topologies can be implemented with at least 1/N less point to point interconnections, where N=number of channels per multifiber connector interface.