US Patent 7873056 Switch device, switching method and switch control program

A switch device is composed of a switch portion 1-1, input side port mapping blocks 1-4-1 to 1-4-P, output side port mapping blocks 1-5-1 to 1-5-P, and a virtualization controller (central controller) 1-0 so that the switch device can be logically divided into a plurality of switches each having a capacity smaller than a physical switch capacity or the divided switches can be logically integrated. The switch portion has a plurality of first input ports and a plurality of first output ports. Each of the input side port mapping blocks has a plurality of second input ports and inputs the signals input to the plurality of second input ports to the first input ports of the switch portion. Each of the output side port mapping blocks has a plurality of second output ports and outputs the signals output to the first output ports of the switch portion from the plurality of second output ports.