Ixp2350-based Integrated Access Device Design And Realization

Integrated Access Device (IAD) describes a highly flexible and cost-effective solution for access to the wide area communications infrastructure. It can consolidate multiple types of information such as voice traffic, LAN traffic, video, and/or other types of data and network services onto a single cost-effective, shared access line.The Intel IXP2350 network processor extends Intel's fully programmable architecture to new, lower cost/performance points. Using IXP2350 to implement an IAD can bring a significant improvement in time to market for developers and its high performance can meet the needs of many kinds.This IAD solution consists of a set of interfaces and functions for characterizing IAD components and their capabilities. Customer-side interfaces include LAN interface, voice interface, and wireless interface. Gigabit Ethernet (GE) interface is used here as network interface. Software architecture is designed before all the developing work. Software development includes data plane software and control plane software. This paper is mainly on data plane software because the author mainly worked on it.Data plane software is divided into many Packet Processing Stages(PPS)-Packet Receive PPS, Packet Processing PPS, Traffic Manager PPS, FreelistManager PPS, and Packet Transmit PPS. Using the thought of Intel modularized framework and standardized communication mechanism can make the system more scalable and flexible. At the same time, this IAD reference design uses Intel IXP compiler (IXP-C) and Auto-Partitioning programming model so coding become a much easer work to do.