High-speed IP forwarding mechanism for an MPOA-based switched router

The explosive growth of the Internet traffic has accelerated the proliferation of high speed routers. As today's routers have performance and management limitations, customers are looking for the next generation LAN architectures based on such a high speed technology as ATM. In this paper we present an IP forwarding mechanism for the MPOA-based switched router system, called SR-10, providing MPOA (multiprotocol over ATM) functionality with 10 Gbps ATM switching capability. The SR-10 system can support three kinds of line interfaces: Ethernet, frame relay, and ATM. With a distributed IP processing mechanism, it can provide superior layer-3 transport capability through ATM networks, alleviating bottlenecks and congestion associated with routers and routed paths in the network.