A Hardware/Software Co-Design for RSVP-TE MPLS

This paper presents a hardware/software co-design for Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) using RSVP-TE as a signaling protocol. MPLS is the protocol framework on which the attention of network service provider is focused as it provides privacy and unbreakable security to users. It is meant to primarily prioritize internet traffic and improve bandwidth utilization. As such it provides the possibility of associating quality of service per flow. Furthermore it increases the performance of internet applications and overall efficiency. MPLS solutions are meant to be used with Layer 2 and or Layer 3 protocols. So far MPLS protocols are implemented by equipment providers in the equipment software package. However, software based solutions decrease overall performance of the network. This paper introduces a new FPGA based hardware architecture through which the overall MPLS performance is enhanced by executing core tasks in hardware while allowing other tasks to be executed in the associated FPGA processor to guard against performance degradation. The hardware component is emphasized with descriptions of its architecture and performance.