Software Requirements for Switch/Routers
James Aweya · 2018
This chapter describes the most important technical issues encountered during the development of switch/router software and the industry practices and solutions involved in the development process. It also describes the complex nature of the design decisions involved and shows the many conflicting technical requirements that have to be addressed. While achieving extremely high forwarding rate is desirable, the design also has to address the equally important requirement of routing protocol updates and network stability. A careful balancing of these requirements is key to coming out with a high-performing yet cost-effective design. The chapter discusses some of the key techniques used in the system development areas. It also describes the issues related to processing power, queuing, and memory allocation in the design of switch/routers. In a majority of networks, networking management constitutes the biggest portion of the cost in operating the network. The chapter explains some of key tasks carried out in the line cards.