A system with flexible communication interconnections includes devices and a layer-one switch interconnecting disjoint pairings of communication interfaces. The devices each have at least one communication interface. The layer-one switch has ports, each coupled to a respective one of the communication interfaces, which include the communication interface of each of the devices. For every pairing of a first and different second one of the ports within the disjoint pairings, the layer-one switch is configurable to interconnect bidirectional communications between the respective communication interface for the first port and the respective communication interface for the second port.