General Purpose Routers for the Next Generation Internet

在过去的几年里，将功能从终端主机推到网络路由器上的压力很大。 无论我们将最终的系统称为路由器、应用网关、主动网络、代理，还是拓扑感知服务器，我们都认识到一个普遍的趋势：决定如何处理数据包的逻辑随着时间的推移变得越来越复杂。这是一个争论，potentialfor这种趋势继续几乎是无限的，这意味着一个问题：在下一代互联网路由器的重要属性是什么？该项目的答案是一种新的路由器架构，他们称之为通用路由器（GPR），支持任意复杂的转发逻辑。 GPR架构有六个独特的功能： 性能：提供下一代互联网所需的吞吐量。 可扩展性：易于扩展以支持新的转发功能，而不会影响性能。 可扩展：可扩展到相对较大的大小，大约为100 Gbps端口。 开放：硬件和软件应该是开放的，这样任何人都可以构建或扩展路由器。 商品组件：使用市售组件实现。 稳健性：鲁棒性足以容忍编程错误和恶意攻击。底线是该项目认识到路由器需要从封闭的专用网络设备转变为开放的通用计算/通信系统。实现这一转变的核心挑战是，在使用商用硬件组件和商用操作系统的同时，同时支持日益复杂的转发逻辑和高性能。GPR架构通过两个关键创新实现了这一点。 更好地集成路由器的交换容量和计算周期。 该项目预计， 导致显著更好的缩放特性，以及性能的数量级改进 用于仅需要最小处理周期的分组。 通过路由器的路径层次结构，包括完全在硬件中实现的快速/固定路径 到完全用软件实现的慢速/可编程路径，但也包括中间 除了实现GPR架构-并解决这样做所带来的配置、调度和资源管理问题-该项目还将设计和实现几个新的应用程序： 在互联网的不同假设区域之间转换的边缘路由器。特别值得注意的是， 项目将为包括瘦设备的深度嵌套网络开发路由器功能（例如， 嵌入式系统和低功耗设备）。路由器通常需要承担一些责任 由结束节点取得。 由并行显示处理器阵列（以及相关的帧）组成的可缩放显示系统 缓冲器），每个缓冲器负责墙壁大小的显示器的某个区域。的路由器 充当该阵列的前端-即，将其连接到图形源--必须对数据包进行分段 包含图形指令，并将每个片段转发到正确的处理器。 一种内部防火墙，用于实现安全区并保护站点内的主机相互隔离。不像 位于站点边缘的防火墙，这样的路由器必须对用户进行身份验证，实施访问控制，记录 使用，并实施入侵检测。

There has been tremendous pressure over the last several years to push functionality from end hosts onto network routers. Whether one calls the resulting systems routers, application gateways, active networks,proxies, or even topology-aware servers, a general trend was recognized: the logic that decides how to process packets has grown more and more complex over time. It is a contention that the potentialfor this trend to continue is almost unlimited, which suggests the question: what are the important properties for routers in the next generation Internet? The projects answer is a new router architecture, which theycall a general purpose router (GPR), that supports arbitrarily complex forwarding logic. The GPR architecture has six unique features: Performance: Provides the throughput required by the next generation Internet. Extensible: Easily extended to support new forwarding functions without compromising performance. Scalable: Scales to relatively large sizes, on the order of a hundred of Gbps ports. Open: The hardware and software should be open so anyone can build or extend a router. Commodity Components: Implemented using commercially available components. Robustness: Robust enough to tolerate programming mistakes and malicious attacks.The bottom line is that the project recognizes a need for routers to move from being closed, special-purpose network devices to being open, general-purpose computing/communication systems. The central challengein making this shift is to simultaneously support increasing complex forwarding logic and high performance, while using commercial hardware components and commercial operating systems. The GPR architectureachieves this through two key innovations. Better integration of the router's switching capacity and compute cycles. The project expects this to result in significantly better scaling properties, and an order of magnitude improvement in performance for packets that require only minimum processing cycles. A hierarchy of paths through the router, 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.In addition to implementing the GPR architecture---and solving the configuration, scheduling, and resource management problems that doing so will entail---the project will design and implement several novelapplications: Edge routers that transition between different assumption regions of the Internet. Of particular note, the project will develop router functionality for deeply nested networks that include thin devices (e.g., embedded systems and low-power devices). The router needs to subsume some of the responsibility usually taken by the end node. A scalable display system that consists of an array of parallel display processors (and associated frame buffers), each of which is responsible for some region of a wall-sized display. The router that serves as a front-end to this array---i.e., connects it to a graphics source--must fragment packets containing graphics directives and forward each fragment to the correct processor. An internal firewall that implements enclaves and protects hosts within a site from each other. Unlike a firewall that sits at the edge of a site, such a router must authenticate users, enforce access control, log usage, and implement intrusion detection.