An architecture for a hardware implementation of the OSPF protocol

The problem of finding a shortest path is common to many different fields including transportation systems, mechanical systems and computer communications. Most telecommunication industry protocols like PNNI, OSPF and IS-IS use Dijkstra's algorithm or Bellman-Ford's algorithm to solve the shortest path problem. Today shortest path computations are performed in software which is inefficient for real-time applications using data communication facilities that are sensitive to delay. This paper proposes a hardware architecture for the OSPF protocol to address overall system delay.