Patent 7289510 was granted and assigned to NEC Corporation on October, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A variable-length packet switching system of the present invention converts variable-length packets to fixed-length packets without regard to the size of the individual variable-length packets and causes a packet switch to switch such fixed-length packets at high speed. The system realizes high-speed switching by use of, e.g., an H/W scheme. Particularly, the system is free from conversion losses when converting the variable-length packets to fixed-length packets and thereby minimizes a frequency band required of the packet switch without regard to the packet size.