When protection processing is applied after a fault in the optical switching unit while the path control unit is restarting. One of the plurality of real time collaboration applications can be selected according to the data type to be shared and the plurality of performance statistics. The bit node messages can be updated immediately, and the decoder throughput can be improved. The address information may be used either to read data from or to write data to a device over the interconnect into randomly-accessible memory locations. Consequently the teeth of the blade travel in a loop pattern that crosses itself.