A Framework for Optimizing IP Router Architecture

Contact: Jean-Yves Le Boudec

The explosive growth of the Internet has led to extensive research in the area of new IP router architectures. A trend has emerged towards less centralized, more distributed or parallelized devices, where packet processing is no longer carried out by a central processor (forwarding engine), but is distributed among multiple smaller network processors (forwarding engines). Recently, a framework has been proposed [1] to analyze two types of models: a distributed router architecture and a parallel router architecture. The proposed analyzing framework enables to determine optimal allocation of processing power to the processing nodes, while achieving a given level of packet processing performance and minimizing the overall cost of the device. However, the proposed framework remains limited by a number of restrictive assumptions.

  1. to perform a sanity check on the assumptions made for the proposed optimization framework
  2. to further extend the existing framework by:
    • including the intra-router communication delay
    • using a more realistic (non-linear) function for processor cost/performance relation
    • extending the line card load distribution model to asymmetric models
    • using a more complicated packet arrival process model, based on existing traffic traces
  3. to perform analysis and optimizations over the extended analyzing framework using basic simulation techniques
  4. to draw conclusions out of optimization results about future products architecture

Skills required:

TCP/IP knowledge, basic simulation tools

Benefits:

getting acquainted with up-to-date research in the IP router architecture and gaining experience in problem optimization

Industry:

IBM Zurich Research Lab

Advisor:

Lukas Kencl, IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Tel: +41-1-724 84 26, Fax: +41-1-724 89 55, E-mail: [email protected], (EPFL contact: Prof. JY Le Boudec)

References:

[1] A Framework for Optimizing the Cost and Performance of Next-Generation IP Routers, H. C. B. Chan, H. M. Alnuweiri, V. C. M. Leung, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 17, pp. 1013-1029, June 1999.

[2] A Fifty Gigabit Per Second IP Router, C. Partridge et al, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 6, pp. 237-248, June 1998.

[3] National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR), traffic analysis support http://www.nlanr.net/