A high‐capacity switching method for IP datagrams with multistage networks

The rapidly spreading use of the Internet and the general use of video communication through the Internet have caused a rapid increase in Internet traffic. It is highly probable that the Internet will be used as the network for future multimedia communications. In that case, the capacity of IP routers for the Internet must be enlarged. At present, an IP router capacity of several gigabits per second can be realized, but ATM technology must be applied if a still larger capacity is to be achieved. The IP traffic is of variable length, and the packets are long, which can be handled by ATM. If a high-capacity switch that can handle packets of variable length is created, performance will be improved compared to high-capacity switches based on ATM. The purpose of this paper is to achieve a capacity of 1 Tbps order. Several IP datagram switching methods are proposed and evaluated. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 85(8): 57–65, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecja.1118