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2-D networks of directional couplers (DCs) and Mach-Zehnder interferometers for of all-optical switching in the 3-D physical space are presented and arising problems and their solutions are made transparent. The result also applies to optical signal processing. The all-optical 2-D switching networks, based on 4-gon switches, are compared of 2x2, 3x3 and 4x4 couplers and nearest-neighbor interconnections where the crucial problem is the implementation of >or=3x3 couplers. However, various advantages are expected (1) combination of the massive parallelism of optics and the parallelism in the frequency domain (2) considerable reduction of the number of stages (3) novel properties which are caused by the increase of freedom contributed by the additional space coordinate and (4) an increase of the range of possible applications.