An apparatus and method for connecting a plurality of computing devices, e.g. web servers, database servers, etc., to a plurality of storage devices, such as disks, disk arrays, tapes, etc., by using a stream-oriented (circuit oriented) switch that has high throughput, but that requires non-negligible time for reconfiguration is disclosed. An example of such stream-oriented switch is an optical switch. The preferred embodiment comprises a plurality of communication ports for connection to servers, and plurality of ports for connection to storage devices. The system decodes the requests from the computing devices and uses this information to create circuits, e.g. optical paths in embodiments where the stream-oriented switch is an optical switch, through the stream-oriented switch. The system uses these circuits to route traffic between the computing devices and the storage devices. Buffering data and control in the device memory is used to improve overall throughput and reduce the time spent on reconfigurations.