Research On ForCES Protocol Software And The Implementation

To meet the open and flexibility requirement of the next generation networks, people pay more and more attention to the research of the open programmable networks. ForCES (Forwarding and Control Element Separation) is a WG (Working Group) in IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) routing area. ForCES proposed a router architecture with the physical separation of the Forwarding Element (FE) and the Control Element (CE) .Routers with this architecture meet the demands of the next generation networks very well, and such an architecture is one trend of next generation routers. Now ForCES is defining the standard protocol- the ForCES protocol for the communications between CE and FE. The research team we now work on is one of the authors of this protocol.This thesis primarily research on the implementation of ForCES protocol software. Firstly, we design the software architecture both in FE and CE based on ForCES Framework and ForCES requirements. Secondly, we introduce some key implementation techniques, such as: (1) Use the VxWorks message queues mechanism to get routing redirect packets from the lower software module, and use the router virtual interface device driver technique and IP tunnel technique to solve the problem result from the separation of routing protocols from FE. (2) Use the VxWorks watching dog mechanism to realize the timer for ForCES heartbeat message. (3) Use callback mechanism to report FE asynchronous events to CE. (4) Design an algorithm to graphically display the LFB (Logical Function Block) topology based on inter-LFB interface relations. Finally, we do some functionality testing on ForCES protocol software, including ForCES config message test, ForCES query message test,...