Virtual Network Ports: An Inter-network Switching Framework

1 Abstract: Routers are unable to scale to the explosive growth of the Internet traffic. This is mainly due to the amount of processing required to forward IP packets. IP switching techniques avoid the IP layer by forwarding packets at the link layer. The current IP switching techniques suffer from problems like label explosion, inefficient label stacking and fragmentation. The proposed method addresses these problems through the simple concept of virtual network port. A VNP provides a layer-2 conduit to network ports on remote hosts or routers. They are conceptually simpler, have better semantics and more efficient than labels. They have active controls that allow processing of packets flowing though them. This helps in implementing service guarantee and engineering network traffic.