THE TEJA SOFTWARE PLATFORM FOR NETWORK PROCESSORS Illustrated Using a Case Study for Traffic Flow Accounting

Network bandwidth and packet processing needs are growing faster than processor speed. Even with the doubling of processing power every eighteen months, next generation network systems will require between one and two orders of magnitude more processors than today’s systems. They must rely on scalable, parallel and distributed architectures both in hardware and software. Because the traditional ASIC approach limits flexibility for adaptation to rapidly changing system architectures and delays time to market for the introduction of new functions, silicon vendors have introduced high-performance, programmable network processors. System software for network processors is a critical success factor in next generation networks. This paper describes the Teja software platform for network processors and illustrates its use and performance with a traffic flow accounting case study.