Industrial Consultancy & Sponsored Research (IC&SR) , IIT Madras
Method of Performing Route Lookup in a Network Router and a System thereof
Technology Category/ Market
Category – Networking & Network Infrastructure.
Applications – Data Communication,
Data Centers and Cloud Infrastructure, Telecommunication Networks.
Industry- IT-Hardware, Network communication, Telecommunications, Data Centers.
Market – The global router market was valued at US$15.98 billion in 2022, and is forecasted to grow to US$26.07 billion by 2028. The market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 8% during 2023-2028.
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Problem Statement
- New generation IP routers face a critical design challenge related to route-lookup mechanisms.
- Each incoming IP packet requires longest-prefix matching to determine the next hop, known as route lookup.
- Route lookup involves performing longest prefix match on ordered entries within ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) hardware.
- TCAM hardware enables parallel search for matching entries but consumes high power.
- Research has shifted towards reducing TCAM power consumption, such as designing power-efficient TCAM cells and using SRAM emulation.
- Conventional solutions maintain TCAM capacity equation while performing route lookup based on longest prefix match using TCAM hardware.
Technology
- Present disclosure relates to a method and system for routing data in a packet switched router in a communication network, and to provide a performing route look-up in a network router (Fig. 1, 2 & 3).
- First router shares a direct index with one or more neighboring routers.
- A second router of the one or more neighboring routers encodes the direct index as part of a packet header and sends the packet header with encoded direct index to a next hop router of the one or more neighboring routers.
- The next hop router then decodes the encoded direct index and locates one or more route look-up results based on the decoding.
Key Features/Value Proposition
- Power-Efficient Route Lookup: The invention introduces a novel approach to route lookup using shared static RAM (SRAM) indices.
- Enhanced Hardware Efficiency: Unlike conventional TCAM-based solutions, the proposed approach minimizes the reliance on power-intensive hardware components.
- Distributed Index Allocation: The invention introduces a coordinated and distributed allocation of unique memory indices, enabling efficient routing decisions without the need for extensive route lookups at every router along the path.
- Versatile Decision Support: The method supports various decision types, such as flow, flowlet, and destination-specific decisions.
- Economical Computation: By eliminating the need for packet rewrites during route lookup, the method reduces computation costs.
- Scalability and Network Performance: The invention’s approach enables routers to efficiently process a large volume of incoming packets.
- Compatibility and Integration: The technology can be seamlessly integrated into existing network router architectures, both within the router or external to it.
Questions about this Technology?
Contact for Licensing
smipm-icsr@icsrpis.iitm.ac.in
ipoffice2@iitm.ac.in
Research Lab
Prof. Krishna M. Sivalingam,
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Intellectual Property
- IITM IDF Ref. 1651
- IN 201841003640
- PCT/IN2019/050072 – Published
Technology Readiness Level
TRL – 3/4
Technology validated in lab.