The architecture design for a terabit IP switch router

Abstract

We propose an architecture for scalable, high capacity IP switch routers in which we apply fixed-length packet switching technology to support high speed IP forwarding. The proposed IP switch router consists of routing controllers, routing modules and a switch plane. The architectures of routing modules and switch plane whose aggregate capacity can be as large as ten terabit are proposed. The throughput of the IP switch router is guaranteed by a fixed-length packet switch plane which is able to emulate the ideal output queueing (OQ) switch in terms of throughput and average internal queueing delay. The performance of the switch plane is presented and the link list operations of routing modules are investigated.