Guest Editorial: Special Section on Emerging Topics in the Design of High Performance Internet Routers

Internet traffic growth is very rapid due to many popular internet applications such as big data applications, real-time entertainment, and P2P file-sharing. These applications involve a great deal amount of data for transferring through the Internet. The design of internet routers is affected by data throughput, communication speed, and packet forwarding speed. Internet routers consult the destination address of each packet received and perform IP lookups in their router tables to determine the next hop for packets. High-performance routers require high-speed IP address lookup to speed up packet forwarding. Then, using information in its routing table or routing algorithm, it directs the packet to the next network on its journey. Routers perform the “traffic directing” functions on the Internet. A data packet is forwarded from one router to another through the networks that constitute the internetwork until it reaches its destination node. When multiple routers are used in interconnected networks, the routers exchange information about destination addresses using a dynamic routing protocol. Each router builds up a table listing the preferred routes between any two systems on the interconnected networks. A router has interfaces for different physical types of network connections. It also contains firmware for different networking communications protocol standards. Each network interface uses this specialized computer software to enable data packets to be forwarded from one protocol transmission system to another. The focus of this special issue is on routing algorithms, routing table design, routing protocol specifying, security strategy, and IPv6 deployment.