Evolvable Internet Hardware Platforms

Network routing platforms and Internet firewalls of the next decade will be radically different than the platforms of today. They will contain modular components that can be dynamically reconfigured over the Internet. But, unlike the active networks that are in the research labs today, these new platforms will not suffer from the performance penalty of processing packets in software. These platforms will implement routing, packet filtering, and queuing functions in reprogrammable hardware. The hardware of the system will evolve over time as packet processing algorithms and protocols progress. The granularity of the system will be configurable down to the level of the logic gates. These logic gates, and the interconnections between them, will be reconfigurable over the Internet. These routers will enable new services to be rapidly deployed over the Internet and operate at the full rate of the an Internet backbone link. Through the development of the the Field Programmable Port Extender (FPX), a platform has been built that demonstrates how networking modules can be used for rapid prototype and deployment of networking hardware. The platform includes high-speed network interfaces, multiple banks of memory, and Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) logic. Applications have been developed for the FPX that include Internet packet routing, data queuing, and application-level data modification. The FPX is currently used as a component in an evolvable router. ∗This research is supported by NSF: ANI-0096052 and Xilinx Corp.