Reliability evaluation of fabric architecture as a replacement for router in carrier network

The fabric architecture, which can realize massive packet forwarding even with small switches/routers, has been widely used as a network infrastructure in data centers in order to achieve high scalability and low cost. In carrier networks, large scale routers have been adapted as core routers due to the requirement of high density for accommodating a large number of users. Furthermore, the redundant configuration of these routers can be used for high reliability. However, these traditional approaches result in a significant cost increase. The fabric architecture has the potential to solve this problem. In this paper, we propose a transformation from the router based architecture to the fabric based architecture. We also evaluate the reliability of these two architectures.