Beyond single-box SW router architectures

Monolithic IP-routers architectures are becoming inadequate with respect to the increase in traffic volume and network function complexity coming from new services. Current technological constraints prevent this kind of design and constructive approach to go further, while decentralized and modular systems seem to offer a better solution to the quest for the next generation router architecture. In this paper we present a design and implementation of a distributed Linux SW router (SR), based on the concept of physical separation between different functional modules. A deployment of SRs is used to validate the efficiency and reliability of the proposed solution.