A COMMUNICATION ROUTING SYSTEM

A distributed routing system is described for use in a communication network. The routing system includes: at least one processor configured as a routing engine and/or a management engine, at least one switch fabric controller configured for controlling out-of-band traffic arriving thereat, and a plurality of white boxes, each being a stand-alone hardware comprising at least one line card and/or at least one fabric switching unit for providing switching and/or routing capabilities within a forwarding plane of the distributed routing system, and wherein the at least one control switch is capable of connecting the plurality of white boxes to the at least one processor, thereby enabling at least one processor to manage the routing of traffic to/from the plurality of white boxes.