Fault tolerant single plane switch fabric for a telecommunication system

A switching node of a telecommunication system comprising a plurality of Line Termination Modules (LT- 0 , LT_N) interconnected by a fault tolerant single plane switch fabric that comprises at least two physically independent Field Replaceable Elements (FRE- 1 , FRE- 2 ) interconnected by a Switch Module Interface (SMI). Each line termination module has ports connected to ingress/egress ports (PPL- 10 , PPL- 1 N; PPL- 20 , PPL 2 N) of at least two distinct Field Replaceable Elements. In this switching node, multiple logically disjointed switch planes are avoided. The traffic injected by a line termination module in one physical ingress port of the single plane switch fabric can reach any of the physical egress ports either directly through one Field Replaceable Element or through two (or more) of them via the Switch Module Interface(s). The switch fabric is able to perform management and configuration on data packets transmitted there through as it behaves as a single logical switch fabric with respect to the processing of data packets, i.e. for filtering, classification, forwarding, queuing, scheduling, . . . In case of switch fabric plane or fabric plane port failure, a standard mechanism takes care of protection of the traffic.