Computer Science

Colloquium Details

Internet Exchange Architecture: Building blocks for a programmable Internet

Abstract

With the rapid adoption of broadband Internet connections, e-commerce and virtual networks, there is new demand for more sophisticated network services at higher bandwidths -- both at the network edge and within the network infrastructure. These network services can be defined as applications that require direct access to packet or cell-level information to analyze, modify and forward traffic. Some examples of such end-to-end services include IP forwarding and protocol conversion coupled with traffic prioritization and virtual private routing, Quality of Service (QoS) including usage-level and service-level agreements and bandwidth and traffic scaling solutions such as load-balancing or web caching. Each of these sophisticated network services requires more computation on packets, and highThe Intel" Internet Exchange' Architecture (IXA) is a new communication architecture that provides both software and hardware building blocks for building programmable network elements. The architecture includes programmable network processors and packet processors along with a common programming interface specifically designed to enable the more flexible and cost-effective development of value-add services. This talk will introduce the IXA and provide details of key elements of the architecture with example applications.