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SUMMARYAlways-on networking and a growing interest in multimedia-and conversational-IP services offer an opportunity to network providers to participate in the service layer, if they increase functional intelligence in their networks. An important prerequisite to providing advanced services in IP access networks is the availability of a high-speed packet classification module in the network nodes, necessary for supporting any IP service imaginable. Often, access nodes are installed in remote offices, where they terminate a large number of subscriber lines. As such, technology adding processing power in this environment should be energy-efficient, whilst maintaining the flexibility to cope with changing service requirements. Network processor units (NPUs) are designed to overcome these operational restrictions, and in this context this paper investigates their suitability for wireline and robust packet classification in a firewalling application. State-of-the-art packet classification algorithms are examined, whereafter the performance and memory requirements are compared for a Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) and sequential search approach. Several space optimizations for implementing BDD classifiers on NPU hardware are discussed and it is shown that the optimized BDD classifier is able to operate at gigabit wirespeed, independent of the ruleset size, which is a major advantage over a sequential search classifier.

Abstract:Keywords:In this paper, we address the design of a generic architecture for the management of residential services. The architecture consists of components both at the customers' side as well as at the service provider's side. The key features of the architecture are service modularity, the concept of service sessions, service packaging and subscription. The architecture allows service providers and telecom operators to rapidly provide new integrated value-added services to their customers. Layer-based design ensures that the architecture is independent of the particular service and service realization technology. The architecture provides generic access session management, service session mangement, subscription management and billing. Its implementation is based on J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition). The various components of the architecture will be discussed, together with the implementation issues.

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Abstract-Substantial research effort is currently devoted to the development of a future, low-cost access and edge network, enabling the delivery of broadband multimedia services to subscribers. As the world is moving away from current ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) access network architectures for a number of reasons, including lack of Quality of service (QoS) and autoconfiguration support, this paper presents how IPv6 can fill the hole that ATM and PPP leave behind in a very convenient, packet-oriented way. The described architecture allows multiple edge nodes to be present, increasing robustness in case of edge node failure, but also increasing scalability as non-local traffic can be balanced across multiple edge nodes. The ability to process local traffic without edge involvement further increases scalability, due to the growing peer-to-peer traffic volume. Since the architecture is independent of the underlying layer-2 technology used for the aggregation network, a phased and smooth migration from ATM to Ethernet equipment, which is claimed cheaper and easier to maintain, is possible. For some selected broadband access topologies, an efficient IPv6 subnetting scheme, minimizing routing tables through hierarchical addressing, is introduced and evaluated. Solutions for forcing non-local traffic to the correct ISP edge, in a multi-ISP environment, are presented. Finally, the deployment of the described architecture in an actual IPv6 test bed is discussed.