Analyzing the function and performance of backbone routers

Backbone routers have a lot to learn from the place, here we mainly introduce the backbone of the router function and performance. It is estimated that the backbone routers will account for 15 billion USD, the LAN Converter will account for 10 billion USD, and the traffic management exchanger will grow to 4 billion dollars.





If the survey report is accurate enough, then it means that the backbone routers in the future of the Internet market occupies the largest share, which explains why Foundry Netiron series, as well as Riverstone, Extreme and other manufacturers of backbone routers by the market considerable attention.





in fact, such predictive analysis has a certain degree of theoretical and practical basis. First of all, because of the rapid development of broadband metropolitan Area Network, whether it is the core layer, or sinks layer, access layer are used the most advanced equipment, not only more powerful, packet throughput is higher, while the port density and bandwidth are greatly improved, then at the top of the pyramid of the core layer of natural need more powerful backbone routers to support. Secondly, due to the transformation of every local metropolitan area network, the ubiquitous local broadband metropolitan area Network has been formed, as the backbone of each metropolitan area network, it also needs to be upgraded completely, which also gives the backbone router another exhibition skill. Backbone routers have such a market demand for support, want to enter the market of natural many manufacturers, but can really meet customer demand for products are not many. Compared with the LAN switch, the development and production of backbone routers are more complicated, and the requirements for technical level are higher. Because the backbone of the router is indeed in the pyramid, the backbone of the network or metropolitan area Network are very important equipment, then how should customers choose the appropriate backbone routers? Here are two simple ways to think.





1. Routing function (Routing function)





as a backbone router, the routing function is naturally extremely important. This includes several key points:





Protocol Category: IP protocol is the most fundamental, in addition, whether to support other agreements? such as IPX, Apple talk, and so on.





Routing Exchange Protocol: BGP4, OSPF, RIP (1, 2) is the most fundamental, in addition to supporting other protocols? such as Is-is, MPLS and so on.





Multicast protocol: IGMP, DVMRP, PIM-DM, Pim-sm, MSDP, MBGP, etc. 3lian.com





QoS Features: Do you support QoS settings based on L2, L3, and L4 (data flow)? How is the priority queue mechanism implemented?





Bandwidth management function: Does IT support QoS minimum bandwidth, maximum bandwidth setting, and whether the specified access rate function is supported?





security Features: Does the device have secure features such as SSH, SCP, Radius, tacacs/tacacs+, AAA, etc. can protect the server or itself from hacker attacks, such as DOS (blocking service) attacks, ping of Death (ping of Death) Attack? Can I provide a line-speed ACL (access control list) feature?





IP Billing function: can provide nethow billing function, whether can provide Xrmon sampling billing function? Of course, more importantly, whether these features are actually successful cases in large networks, and whether they can be compatible with the products of major manufacturers, these are also factors to consider.





2. Routing Performance (routingperformance)





backbone routing, in addition to its complete functionality, must also provide high-performance routing and forwarding capabilities, which is also different from traditional routers. Most traditional routers have low speed, most of them are processed by the CPU, so the routing performance is much lower (such as 1.5MPPS); And the new generation of three-tier converters because of the high speed, and routing forwarding is handled in hardware by a special chip (ASIC), so the routing performance is much higher (such as 96MPPS), but also because of the limitations of the chip design, it is not always possible to provide the full routing function required for backbone routing, or some features may be provided However, it still has to be handled by the CPU, so there is still a performance problem. Backbone routers must take into account the advantages of traditional routers and third-tier switches in architecture, while avoiding their drawbacks, that is, routing forwarding is handled by the ASIC as much as possible, and for chips that cannot be processed, is handled by the RISC CPU and independent memory configured on each port. Such backbone router architecture can provide both high routing performance and complete backbone routing capabilities through chips dispersed on each port and RISC CPUs dispersed on each port.





Meanwhile, the use of this decentralized chip +CPU architecture also makes the backbone of the router has a good scalability, that is, when the port increases, the chip and CPU followed by the increase in the routing performance also increased, while the traditional routers because of the common CPU, its routing performance is fixed, when the port increased, Because overall performance does not increase, it is easy to create bottlenecks.




The performance of
routers can not only be detected from the architecture, but also the type and density of the ports affect the performance of the backbone routers. For example, whether to provide high-density non-blocking gigabit, whether it can provide or are about to provide 10Gbps ports, whether to provide high-density non-blocking 2.5Gbps POS Port (OC-48), whether it can provide or is about to provide 10Gbps Pos port (OC-192), These will directly affect the performance of the backbone routers. Therefore, a good backbone router to provide more than 170MPPS of routing performance will not be a problem.





backbone routers not only high investment, its technical level is also high, so choose a good performance/price ratio of products, select a decentralized structure of products, select a consistent with international standards, with compatibility of products, select a functional complete product, choose a mature, Successful application of the product is very important to customers, and the market with these complete features of the products are not many, customers must select carefully selected to protect their investment.