Research And Implementation Of Ethernet OAM Technology In Distributed Switching System

For its simple configuration, flexibility, low cost and other characteristics, Ethernet technology has been widely known and utilized, and developed rapidly just from its beginning. With the continuous development of Ethernet technology, the switch as part of its essential networking equipment also has been upgraded fastly. From HUB of the initial to the present high-end switches, switch technology for its cheap to learn, wire-speed forwarding and so on, has been widely used in Ethernet.With the development of Ethernet and the expansion process from LAN to the MAN and WAN, Ethernet services capacity, quality of service, scalability, reliability, manageability etc have faced enormous challenges. Particularly, the lack of effective management and maintenance mechanism, has become a serious obstacle in the applications of Ethernet technology in the MAN and WAN. So, the realization of Ethernet OAM (operations administration maintenance) mechanism has become an inevitable trend of development. Ethernet OAM can provide comprehensive manageability, simplify network operations, test network performance and reduce network operating costs. Therefore, there is important significance to realize Ethernet OAM functions in the high-end switching equipment.Based on the in-depth analysis of technologies and developing status of Ethernet OAM, software in Ethernet OAM framework has been designed in a distributed switch system, referring to the experience in the design of SDH OAM and MPLS OAM. This project is based on software to load Ethernet OAM software package in the original switch system. After a detail analysis of OAM functional requirement, this thesis designs the overall architecture for high-end switch platform at first and gives the specific implement plan. Then, considering the character of the software and hardware in the switch, the distributed and high availability design is necessarily carried out. After that, the data structure is designed and this thesis puts forward and realizes an Ethernet OAM plan. Finally, this research tests the software module in detail in high-end distributed switches of a company as the major test equipment. The Testing result shows that this software of the Ethernet OAM based on C programing language can realize the management and maintenance of Ethernet in the network maked up by high-end distributed switches.