Within a SpaceWire network the nodes are connected through low-cost, low-latency, full-duplex, point-to-point serial links, and packet switching wormhole routing routers.
[1] DS-DE is well-favored because it describes modulation, bit formats, routing, flow control, and error detection in hardware, with little need for software.
SpaceWire also has very low error rates, deterministic system behavior, and relatively simple digital electronics.
SpaceWire and IEEE 1355 DS-DE allows for a wider set of speeds for data transmission, and some new features for automatic failover.
A SpaceWire router is usually a crossbar switch-type device, operating in wormhole switching mode.
Some NASA projects using it include the James Webb Space Telescope, Swift's Burst Alert Telescope, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, LCROSS, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R), and the SCaN Testbed, previously known as the Communications, Navigation, and Networking Reconfigurable Testbed (CoNNeCT).