Implementacija funkcija paketskog procesiranja u internet ruterima velikog kapaciteta

Abstract

Internet predstavlja jedan od najvažnijih temelja razvoja modernog društva i učestvuje u svim aspektima svakodnevnog života - poslovnom, socijalnom, zabavnom, edukativnom itd. Internet je postigao globalni uspeh zahvaljujući svojoj robusnosti i mogućnosti da povezuje različite tehnologije u jednu meñusobno povezanu mrežu. Osnovu arhitekture Interneta čine ruteri koji omogućavaju globalnu povezanost svih delova Internet mreže. Pošto ruteri čine osnovnu gradivnu jedinicu Interneta, performanse i mogućnosti rutera imaju ogroman uticaj na kvalitet rada Internet mreže. Broj Internet korisnika neprestano raste. Takoñe, razvijaju se i nove aplikacije i servisi koji zahtevaju sve veće protoke, usled čega se u Internet mreži instaliraju linkovi sve većih kapaciteta. Kao posledica, količina saobraćaja na Internetu neprestano raste, pa samim tim Internet ruteri postaju sve opterećeniji, naročito u jezgru Internet mreže gde je saobraćaj najintezivniji. Internet ruteri moraju neprestano da se usavršavaju i unapreñuju, da bi mogli veoma brzo obrañivati ogromne količine podataka. Dodatne otežavajuće okolnosti sa stanovišta obrade podataka u ruterima su potreba za uvoñenjem mehanizama kvaliteta servisa i multikast saobraćaj koji je sve popularniji. Mnogi istraživači i naučnici rade na unapreñivanju funkcionalnosti rutera i razvoju novih rešenja i algoritama koji treba da omoguće efikasniji rad rutera. Meñutim, velik problem u razvoju novih rešenja i unapreñenja postojećih funkcija je zatvorenost rutera komercijalnih proizvoñača pa samim tim razvijana rešenja se tipično ispituju zasebno bez potpune integracije sa svim funkcijama rutera. Ovakav način ispitivanja je nepotpun jer ne omogućava kompletan uvid u kvalitet rada novog rešenja u realnom okruženju. Da bi se izbegli navedeni problemi, razvojni tim pod vodstvom dr Aleksandre Smiljanić je u okviru projekta „Sistemska integracija Internet rutera“ podržanog od strane Ministarstva za Nauku i tehnološki razvoj Republike Srbije započeo razvoj prototipa Internet rutera. Konačni cilj projekta je bio razvoj komercijalnog proizvoda, meñutim, pored ovog cilja namera je bila i da se obezbedi otvorena platforma istraživačima i studentima na kojoj bi mogli da proučavaju internu strukturu i arhitekturu rutera i da razvijaju i testiraju nova rešenja u realnom okruženju.

Internet is one of the most important parts of the modern society. It participates in all aspects of everyday’s life - business, social, entertainment, education etc. Internet achieved global success thanks to its robustness and internetworking between various technologies. Routers enable Internet’s global connectivity and thus represent the foundation of the Internet. As routers are the main components of the Internet, their performances and capabilities have great impact on Internet quality performances. The number of Internet users continuously grows. New applications and services that demand high throughput are constantly developed, and as consequence higher capacity links are installed. The Internet traffic continuously grows, so Internet routers are more and more loaded with traffic, especially in the Internet core, where Internet traffic is most intensive. Therefore, Internet routers must be always upgraded to support high speed processing of large amount of the Internet traffic. QoS mechanisms and multicast traffic represent additional difficulties in the future router development. Many researchers and scientists are involved in router development process that includes development of new solutions and algorithms that enable more efficient router performances. However, the main problem in the development process is the closed router architecture in routers of commercial companies, thus developed solutions are tested without complete integration with the rest of the router functions. This leads to incomplete development and testing. To avoid aforementioned problems, research team led by Aleksandra Smiljanić started Internet router prototype development in the project „System integration of the Internet router“ supported by the Serbian Ministry of Science. The main goal of the project was development of the commercial router. Also, very important goal was development of the open source platform for researchers and students that would be used for the education purposes, as well as the research purposes where new solutions could be tested in the real environment. Internet routers contain two planes - data plane and control plane. Data plane is implemented in hardware and is responsible for fast IP packet processing. Control plane is implemented in software and is responsible for communication with router’s environment (neighbor routers, administrators and etc.). In this PhD thesis IP packet processors are developed and implemented. IP packet processors represent the most important part of the data plane.