rive at the output simultaneously. Therefore, the output queue must run L times faster than the inputs (where L<N) as opposed to N times faster, which is the case with regular out- put-buffered switches. The key problem in the design of a knockout switch is to ensure that the packet losses are fairly distributed among the incoming virtual circuits. The abacus switch is a multicast scalable architecture with input and output buffering. 20,21 designed to avoid the packet loss problem associated with the lack of routing links in the switch fabric of knockout switches. Although such a switch can be designed to achieve a satisfactory probability of packet/cell loss of 10-10, for example, the fundamental assumptions for such calculations are that the traffic from different ports is uncorrelated and that the traffic load is uniformly distributed to all out- put ports. In many Internet-based web services, this is simply unrealistic. A popular web site may be faced with heavy traffic destined toward it at the same time, creating what we know as a hot spot sit- uation where packet/cell loss probability becomes dramatically higher. The Sunshine switch provides multiple paths from its inputs to all its outputs. 22 In order to accom- plish this, it uses several parallel Banyan networks, which are fed by a Batcher sorting network. In a 16. K. E. Batcher, "Sorting Networks and Their Application," Proceedings of Spring Joint Computing Conference, AFIPS (1968): 307-314. 17. F. A. Tobagi and T. Kwok, "The Tandem Banyan Switching Fabric: A Simple High-Performance Fast Packet Switch," Proceedings of IEEE Infocom '91 (1991): 1245-1253. 18. Y.S. Yeh, M. G. Hluchyj, and A. S. Acampora, "The Knockout Switch: A Simple, Modular Architecture for High-Performance Packet Switching," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication 5 (October 1987): 1426-1435. 19. Refer to Note 6. 20. H. J. Chao, B. S. Choe, J. S. Park, and N. Uzun, "Design and Implementation of Abacus Switch: A Scalable Multicast ATM Switch," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in