| 摘要 |
A high performance scalable networking bridge/router system (10-20) is based on a backbone communication medium and message passing process which interconnects a plurality of input/output modules (13-20). The input/output modules vary in complexity from a simple network interface device having no switching or routing resources on board, to a fully functional bridge/router system. A central internetworking engine (10) includes a physical layer communication system for transferring control messages and data packets across the backbone, a logical layer interprocessor messaging system which operates over the physical layer across the backbone for communication between intelligent input/output modules (13-20), and between such modules in the central internetworking engine, and distributed protocol modules which are supported on intelligent input/output modules, and communicate using the logical interprocessor messaging system with the central internetworking resources. |
