ROUTING FABRIC

摘要

A system and method of using a switch fabric of commodity Ethernet switches to produce a scalable router is disclosed. A special-format Media Access Control (MAC) address is assigned to each switch. The assigned MAC address of a switch comprises some bits that can identify the topological location of the switch. The switch fabric intercepts and responds to address resolution requests from hosts with assigned MAC addresses of switches. A packet received from a host is forwarded according to those bits in the destination MAC address of the packet. It further uses some bits in the MAC address to achieve network virtualization.

主权项

1. A method for a switch fabric, the method comprising:
assigning a Media Access Control (MAC) address to a switch, of said switch fabric, wherein said MAC address of said switch comprises a set of bits identifying a location of said switch within said switch fabric; forwarding, at any switch other than said switch, an Internet Protocol (IP) packet destined to said MAC address of said switch according to a first match key comprising said set of bits; and forwarding, at said switch, said IP packet destined to said MAC address of said switch according to a second match key comprising a destination IP address of said IP packet and replacing a destination MAC address of said IP packet by a MAC address retrieved by said second match key.