Load-Balanced Router

This book is about the load-balanced router, a router§architecture that is scalable and can guarantee a§full capacity. A load-balanced router consists of two§stages. First, a load-balancing stage spreads§arriving packets equally among linecards. Then, a§forwarding stage transfers packets from the linecards§to their final destination. A load-balanced router§does not use any centralized scheduler, as most§current router architectures. Therefore, it can scale§while providing the throughput guarantees needed by§network operators. §§It this book, we show how to implement the§load-balanced router using a single passive optical§switch fabric with no reconfigurations, while§current routers commonly need switch fabrics with§fast reconfiguration times. Further, we introduce a§simple distributed algorithm that can avoid packet§reordering, a common problem of load-balanced§architectures. Finally, we present a practical switch§fabric architecture that would enable load-balanced§routers to scale to higher numbers of interfaces. We§conclude by showing that the load-balanced router can§help provide the scalability and capacity guarantees§needed in the Internet.