Design and implementation of Gigabit router using network processor

With the Internet explosion, the data rate that a networking device needs to support has increased dramatically. A common data rate requirement for routers today is 10 Gigabits per second or higher. Also, the networking device requires the flexibility to perforin packet forwarding and other complex functions such as firewall and Quality of Service. The router with a network processor can be a solution for these requirements. This paper presents an implementation of a gigabit router using IXP2800 which is Intel's network processor. We described the hardware architecture of the implemented router and the software implementation to boot and manage the system. Also, we implemented IPv4 forwarding application which runs on the IXP2800. The architecture of the forwarding application is included in this paper.