Design and Performance of Scalable High-Performance Routers

Title: Design and Performance of Scalable High-Performance Routers

Authors: Tilman Wolf

Abstract: The flexibility to adapt to new services and protocols without changes in the underlying hardware is and will increasingly be a key requirement for advanced networks. Introducing a processing component into the data path of routers and implementing packet processing in software provides this ability. In such a programmable router, a powerful processing infrastructure is necessary to achieve a level of performance that is comparable to custom silicon-based routers and to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. This work aims at the general design of such programmable routers and, specifically, at the design and performance analysis of the processing subsystem. The necessity of programmable routers is motivated, and a router design is proposed. Based on the design, a general performance model is developed and quantitatively evaluated using a new network processor benchmark. Operational challenges, like scheduling of packets to processing engines, are addressed, and novel algorithms are presented. The results of this work give qualitative and quantitative insights into this new domain that combines issues from networking, computer architecture, and system design.

Published: Tilman Wolf, Design and Performance of a Scalable High-Performance Programmable Routers, Ph.D. thesis, Department of Computer Science, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, May 2002.

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BibTeX:
@phdthesis{Wolf:DPS02,
   author = {Wolf, Tilman},
   title   = {Design and Performance of a Scalable High-Performance Programmable Routers},
   school = {Department of Computer Science, Washington University},
   year    = 2002,
   month   = may,
   address = {St. Louis, MO}
}

Copyright: © 2002 Tilman Wolf.