Abstract
This paper argues that there is a need for routers to move from being closed, special-purpose network devices to being open, general-purpose computing/communication systems. The central challenge in making this shift is to simultaneously support increasing complex forwarding logic and high performance, while using commercial hardware components and open operating systems. This paper introduces the hardware and software architecture for such a general-purpose router. The architecture includes two key innovations. First, it better integrates the router's switching capacity and compute cycles. We expect this to result in significantly better scaling properties, and an order of magnitude improvement in performance for packets that require only minimum processing cycles. Second, the architecture supports a hierarchy of forwarding paths, ranging from fast/fixed paths implemented entirely in hardware to slow/programmable paths implemented entirely in software, but also including intermediate paths that exploit the improved integration of cycles and switching.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages | 38-43 |
Number of pages | 6 |
State | Published - 1999 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | Proceedings of the 1999 7th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-VII) - Rio Rico, AZ, USA Duration: Mar 29 1999 → Mar 30 1999 |
Other
Other | Proceedings of the 1999 7th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-VII) |
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City | Rio Rico, AZ, USA |
Period | 3/29/99 → 3/30/99 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Computer Science