STRIPING ALGORITHM FOR SWITCHING FABRIC

A striping algorithm selects a route on which to transmit each next data segment, in dependence upon relative channel loading so far, taking account of multicast. Input modules can keep a channel loading history for each route it has, and can update its history for each route that a data segment follows through the fabric. In an embodiment, the input module transmits each data segment toward an i'th intermediate stage module, where i minimizesq(i,a(G),c)+q(i,b(G),c)+ . . . +q(i,k(G),c),where q(i, j, c) indicates the number of bytes of data sent, during a given prior time period, from the input module to each j'th one of the output modules via each i'th one of the intermediate stage modules, and a(G), b(G), . . . , and k(G) are the output module(s) in the multicast group G to which the data segment is destined.