Quantitative classification of interconnections

Abstract

A general network is considered regarding type and number of connection possibilities between network ports. Point-to-point, multicast, inverse multicast, broadcast and conference connections are summed up to two basic types of communication out of which every other can be obtained. By grouping all receivers or transmitters of a certain multicast or inverse multicast together a solution for all types of connections is found. If generality is reduced the known formulae for the number of permutations in networks are obtained. The results can be applied for the interconnection networks of parallel computers, for local or wide area networks, for digital telephone or multimedia systems.