Wirespeed Mac Address Translation and Traffic Management in Access Networks

Today, an increasing number of customers subscribes for a high bandwidth internet access. But not only speed is demanded. Reliability, availability, and security move more and more into the customers focus. Carriers and Internet Service Providers, too, have increasing requirements derived from new services they want to offer to their customers or use themselves. A hardware solution is presented, which provides the functionality of MAC Address Translation and Traffic Management. This solution is highly flexible and can be adapted to the providers’ needs. The module is implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and offers a wide range of functionality in an Access Network for relatively low costs. Additionally, the selection of an FPGA as implementation target offers the possibility to adapt the functionality to future needs by in-field reconfiguration.