Design of a High Speed Packet Routing Switch Utilizing Transputers
Christopher D. Ward, Saqib Khan · 1992
A high speed Transputer based packet routing switch to model a satellite node is described with an emphasis on the mechanics used. The node will form part of a test-bed used to study characterstics of a low altitude multiple satellite (LAMS) network. Each node is modelled using a Host PC and five Transputers which communicate with other nodes through laser-crosslinks and are designed in accordance with the International Standards Organization''s (ISO) Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) 7 layered network model. Communications are full-duplex and expected to be between 1-5Mbits/sec. Each node requires four external channels through which it communicates with other nodes. These channels receive NPDUs (Network layer Protocol Data Units) and either accept these packets or route them to the next node. The Transputer network has been designed so that dynamic routing table loading can be performed. The simulation is expected to behave as a M/M/1 queueing model. Internal threads will be used to report queue lengths and throughput. Four extra TRAMs will be connected to the external links to model external nodes and will contain a monitor process which gathers statistics on mean delay, number of packets accepted, etc.