WO2008148330A1

WO2008148330A1 - A system and method for data forwarding

Info

Publication number: WO2008148330A1
Application number: PCT/CN2008/070995
Authority: WO
Inventors: Ke Shuai
Original assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Priority date: 2007-06-07
Filing date: 2008-05-16
Publication date: 2008-12-11
Also published as: CN101060487A; CN101060487B

Abstract

A system and method for data forwarding are disclosed. Said method uses two or more than two forwarding engines to perform the data processing procedure, which is performed by using single forwarding engine before. Said forwarding engine is selected by using the information exchange between switching network and each of the forwarding engines. By employing said system and method, the problem, that single forwarding engine can't support high bandwidth access, is resolved efficiently, and the load sharing and backup of forwarding engines are realized. In said system, a common resource management module is used to manage all of the common resources, and a traffic management module is used to perform the centralized-control of QoS.

Description

Data forwarding system and method

[1] Technical field

[2] The present invention relates to the field of network communications, and in particular, to a data forwarding system and method in network communication.

[3] Background of the invention

[4] At present, in the design of high-end routers, data forwarding is generally performed by means of forwarding and control separation. Control plane (CP: Control

Plane) is responsible for processing various protocols, generating forwarding entries, and delivering them to the forwarding plane (FP: Forward Plane), and then forwarding the data by the forwarding plane. Here, the forwarding plane can use various forwarding engines (FE: Forward Engineer) , such as network processor (NP: Network

Processor), ASIC (Application Specific Integrated)

Circuits), Central Processing Unit (CPU: Center Process

Unit) / Multi-core CPU to achieve. The general forwarding structure diagram is shown in Figure 1. In Figure 1, the control plane CP, the forwarding plane FP, the switching network, and the interface card PIC (PIC: Physical Interface) are included.

Card), wherein the forwarding plane FP further includes a forwarding engine FE, a table lookup module, and two traffic management T M (TM: Traffic Management) modules, and the data forwarding process is:

First, the interface card PIC transmits the data to the switching network, and the switching network transmits the received data to the forwarding engine FE. The control plane CP parses and processes the various data protocols, and generates various entries for forwarding. To the forwarding plane FP; the look-up table module in the forwarding plane FP is used to find the content of the corresponding table item, and then the forwarding data selected by the forwarding plane FP in the forwarding plane FP processes the transmitted data, and after processing, The switching network transmits the processed data to the designated interface card PIC to complete the forwarding of the data. The Traffic ManagementTM module is used for control of Quality of Service (QoS) during data transmission.

[6] It can be seen from the above forwarding structure and forwarding process that the forwarding plane is in the process of data forwarding.

FP uses a single forwarding engine FE, which has strict bandwidth requirements. For example, if the access bandwidth is 40G, then the single forwarding engine FE must also be 40G, so that for high bandwidth and high density interfaces, the single forwarding engine May be difficult to meet; in addition, once the single forwarding engine fails, all services are available Can be interrupted, there is no backup of the forwarding engine; peers, for the existing forwarding structure, if you want to achieve complete QoS control, you must provide two traffic management modules in the switching network and interface card PIC, otherwise QoS may Flawed.

[7] In summary, in the process of implementing the present invention, the inventors have found that at least the following problems exist in the prior art: The single forwarding engine is difficult to meet the current high bandwidth, high density interface, and once the forwarding engine fails, Interrupt all services, no backup between forwarding engines.

[8] Summary of the invention

[9] In view of the above problems in the prior art, embodiments of the present invention provide a system and method for data forwarding.

[10] The embodiment of the present invention is implemented by the following technical solutions:

An embodiment of the present invention provides a data forwarding system, including:

[12] 2 or more forwarding engines, wherein the forwarding engine FE is used to process the transmitted data; [13] a switching network, configured to interact with the forwarding engine, and select at least one forwarding engine pair data Process and forward the processed data.

[14] The embodiment of the present invention further provides a data forwarding method, including:

[15] Obtain forwarding engine information of multiple forwarding engines;

[16] selecting at least one of the plurality of forwarding engines according to the forwarding information to process the data and forwarding the processed data.

[17] It can be seen from the foregoing technical solutions that the embodiment of the present invention can solve the problem that the single forwarding engine cannot support high-bandwidth access, and implement load sharing and backup of the forwarding engine, thereby improving the reliability of forwarding. , and solve the fault and performance problems of the single forwarding bow engine.

[18] BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[19] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a data forwarding structure commonly used in the prior art;

2 is a schematic structural diagram of the data forwarding system according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of the data forwarding method according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

FIG. 4 is a schematic overall diagram of a forwarding system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[23] Mode for carrying out the invention

[24] The embodiment of the present invention provides a system and method for data forwarding, which is originally performed by using a single forwarding engine. The process of data processing is performed in two or more forwarding engines, wherein the selection of the forwarding engine can be performed through interaction between the switching network and each forwarding engine. Through the implementation of the technical solution, the problem that the single forwarding engine cannot support the high bandwidth access can be effectively solved, and the load sharing and backup of the forwarding engine are implemented, which not only improves the reliability of forwarding, but also solves the possibility that the single forwarding engine may appear. Failure and performance issues.

[25] For a better description of the embodiments of the present invention, the forwarding system of the specific embodiment of the present invention will now be described as follows:

[26] FIG. 2 is a schematic structural diagram of a data forwarding system according to an embodiment of the present invention, where the figure includes:

[27] 2 or more forwarding engines FE and a switching network, wherein the forwarding engine FE is used to process the transmitted data, and the data described herein may be data coming in through the interface card PIC, the data is The switching network transmits to the forwarding engine FE; the switching network acquires the forwarding information of the forwarding engine FE during the interaction with the forwarding engine FE, and selects at least one forwarding bow engine to perform data according to the forwarding information Processing, the forwarding information described herein may be an enable state and load status information of the forwarding engine, and the forwarding engine FE sends the processed data to the switching network after the data processing is completed. The switching network transmits the processed data according to the outbound interface identifier (ID) information of the processed data, where it can be transmitted to the designated interface card PIC, thereby completing data forwarding, the forwarding engine FE and the interface card PIC described above. It is also possible to use the same switching network.

[28] FIG. 2 further includes a common resource management module and a unified traffic management module (ie, a unified TM module), wherein the common resource management module is configured to process data in the forwarding engine FE and forward the data in the switching network. In the process, the common resource information is uniformly managed, and the public resource information described herein may include the contents of the entry resource for forwarding data, and/or the number of processed data in the process of processing all services and processes. , length, etc. count resource content. Through the integrated management of the above public resources, the necessary number of modules can be reduced, and hardware resources are saved.

[29] The public resource management module may further include a table lookup module and a counting module, wherein the lookup table module is configured to search for the contents of the table items used for forwarding data; and the counting module is used for processing the data, the number, length, etc. of the processed data. Count.

[30] The core hardware acceleration module of the public resource management module described above can also be hung on the switching network, that is, the forwarding engine FE can interact with these modules through the switching network to obtain corresponding resources. [31] The unified traffic management module is used to uniformly control the transmission quality QoS in the process of processing the data by the forwarding engine FE and forwarding the data by the switching network. In the original forwarding system, if you want to implement perfect QoS control, you must provide two traffic management modules on the switching network and interface card. Otherwise, QoS will be flawed. Now, because the interface card also goes through the switching network, the two traffic. The management module can be integrated, so that the QoS control in the data forwarding process can be realized through the unified traffic management module, thereby saving hardware resources.

[32] For the same data sent to the forwarding plane, the packets in the data are generally distributed to multiple forwarding engines for processing. When data needs to be processed, such as table lookup, counting, or QoS, data packets or data packets are required. Part of the message is sent to these corresponding modules for processing, and then returned to the forwarding engine after processing. Since there is no direct connection between these modules, it is difficult to correctly implement the functions of these modules without uniform processing, such as counting modules. If each forwarding engine FE uses a different counting module, for the same data, because There are multiple forwarding engines FE, so there are multiple counters for counting this data. In fact, what we really need is the integration of multiple counters. Of course, the counters of each forwarding engine FE can also be taken through the control plane. The cumulative processing method, but the complexity and load of the system have increased a lot. Therefore, the data forwarding scheme provided by the embodiment of the present invention can effectively implement the integrated management of common resources, reduce the number of necessary modules, and save hardware resources.

[33] In addition, the foregoing two or more forwarding engines FE may be implemented by combining a fixed forwarding engine FE and a forwarding engine FE card in a specific implementation process, where the forwarding engine is implemented. The FE card refers to: The forwarding engine FE can not directly patch the board to the circuit board, but add a corresponding physical interface on the circuit board, and then make a board of the forwarding engine FE, directly buckled on it, so that the configuration is It is very flexible and flexible. Specifically, a forwarding engine FE is fixed in the system, and then according to the actual situation of the network, if the forwarding performance and reliability need to be improved, one or more forwarding engine FE cards can be added, and then the data is forwarded. .

An embodiment of the present invention further provides a data forwarding method, and a forwarding flowchart thereof is shown in FIG. ₃ , where the figure includes:

[35] Box 11: Receive data. The data received therein may be data transmitted by the interface card PIC and then transmitted to the forwarding engine FE via the switching network.

[36] Box 12: The switching network selects the forwarding engine FE that processes the data. Specifically, the switching network transmits data. After being sent to the forwarding engine, an interaction occurs with the forwarding engine. That is, the forwarding engine FE provides forwarding engine information such as the enabled state and load of the engine, and the switching network actually obtains the information; and then according to the information according to a certain algorithm. The policy selects the optimal forwarding engine. For example, the selected algorithm policy may be to select the forwarding engine with the lowest current load among the available forwarding engines.

[37] In addition, the data can also be distributed to different forwarding engines for processing. Here, the information such as the load status of the forwarding engine is changed by the forwarding engine itself according to the processing capability of the network, and the switching network knows. The forwarding engine information of each forwarding engine FE in the system, such as the status of the enabling state and the load status, selects at least one forwarding engine FE to process the data, and the selected policy is as described above, so that the forwarding engine FE can be implemented. Load sharing and backup, peers can also improve forwarding performance and reliability, effectively solving the failure and performance problems of single forwarding.

[38] Box 13: The selected forwarding engine FE processes the transmitted data. As described above, the forwarding engine that processes the data here can be two or more.

[39] Box 14: Send the processed data to the switching network.

[40] Among them, the common resource information in the data forwarding process can be uniformly managed, and the common resource information described herein may include the contents of the entry resource for forwarding data, and the process of processing all the services and processes. In the middle, the number of data, the length, and other count resources are processed.

[41] In addition, in the process of data forwarding, the transmission quality QoS can also be uniformly controlled. In the original forwarding system, if you want to implement perfect QoS control, you must provide two traffic management modules on the switching network and interface card. Otherwise, QoS will be flawed. Now you can control QoS through a unified traffic management module. Save hardware resources.

[42] Box 15: The switching network transmits the data according to the outgoing interface ID of the processed data. Here, the processed data can be transferred to the designated interface card PIC to complete the data forwarding.

[43] In order to further describe the embodiments of the present invention, the technical solutions thereof will be further described in conjunction with specific embodiments:

4 is a schematic diagram of an overall embodiment of a forwarding system of a high-end router according to an embodiment of the present invention, where:

[45] Forwarding plane FP includes two or more forwarding engines FE, switching network, common resource management module and unified traffic management module (ie, unified TM module). The data forwarding process is as follows:

[46] First, the interface card PIC transmits incoming data, and the switching network is responsible for transmitting data to the forwarding plane. The engine is configured to process the various protocols of the data, and the forwarding entry is sent to the forwarding plane FP. The common resource management module in the forwarding plane FP searches for the corresponding entry required for forwarding the data. content.

[47] At the same time, the switching network transmits data to the forwarding engine FE, and generates an interaction with the forwarding engine FE, and finds information such as the enabling status and load status of each forwarding engine FE in the forwarding plane FP, according to The information is selected from at least one of the two or more forwarding engines FE included in the forwarding plane FP to process the data. Specifically, after the switching network transmits data to the forwarding engine, an interaction occurs with the forwarding engine. gp: The forwarding engine FE provides forwarding engine information such as an enabled state and a load of the engine, and the switching network obtains the information. Then, according to the information, an optimal forwarding engine is selected according to a certain algorithm strategy. For example, the selected algorithm strategy may be to select a forwarding engine with the lowest current load among the available forwarding engines. In addition, the data can also be distributed to different forwarding engines for processing. Here, the information such as the load status of the forwarding engine is changed by the forwarding engine itself according to the processing capability of the current network. Knowing the forwarding engine information of each forwarding engine FE in the system, such as enabling status and load status, and then selecting at least one forwarding engine to process the data, the selected strategy is as described above, so that forwarding can be implemented. The load sharing and backup of the engine FE can improve the forwarding performance and reliability, and effectively solve the fault and performance problems of the single forwarding engine FE.

[48] After the selected forwarding engine FE processes the data, it will transfer the processed data to the switching network. The switching network transmits the data to the designated interface card PIC according to the outbound interface ID of the data, and completes the forwarding of the data. .

[49] In addition, in the data forwarding process, the transmission quality QoS is controlled by a unified traffic management module, which can reduce the number of traffic management modules and save hardware resources.

[50] In summary, the embodiment of the present invention can solve the problem that the single forwarding engine FE cannot support high-bandwidth access, and implement load sharing and backup of the forwarding engine FE, which improves the reliability of forwarding and solves the problem. Faults and performance problems of the single-forwarding engine FE; peer-to-peer management through common resources, and unified management of QoS by the traffic management module can reduce the number of modules and save hardware resources.

The above description is only a preferred embodiment of the present invention, but the scope of the present invention is not limited thereto, and any person skilled in the art may within the technical scope disclosed by the embodiments of the present invention. Changes or substitutions that are easily conceived are intended to be covered by the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the scope of protection of the present invention should be determined by the scope of the claims.

Claims

Claim

[1] 1. A data forwarding system, comprising:

Two or more forwarding engines, wherein the forwarding engine FE is configured to process the transmitted data to exchange with the forwarding engine, select at least one forwarding engine to process the data, and forward the processing. The data.

[2] The data forwarding system of claim 1, further comprising:

The traffic management module is configured to perform unified control on the transmission quality QOS in the process of processing the data by the forwarding engine and forwarding the data by the switching network.

[3] The data forwarding system of claim 1, further comprising:

The common resource management module is configured to perform unified management on the public resources in the process of processing the data by the forwarding engine and forwarding the data by the switching network.

[4] 4. The data forwarding system according to claim 1, wherein the two or more forwarding engines include: a fixed forwarding engine, and

One or more added forwarding engine cards.

[5] The data forwarding system according to claim 1, further comprising an interface card, wherein the interface card is connected to the switching network, and is used for data in and out.

[6] 6. The data forwarding system according to claim 3, wherein the common resource management module comprises:

Table lookup module: used to find the contents of the table items used for forwarding data;

Counting module: Used to count the number and length of processed data during data processing.

[7] 7. A data forwarding method, comprising:

Obtain forwarding engine information of multiple forwarding engines;

Selecting at least one of the plurality of forwarding engines to process data according to the forwarding engine information, and forwarding the processed data.

[8] 8. The data forwarding method according to claim 7, wherein the forwarding engine information is an enabling state and load situation information of the forwarding engine.

[9] The forwarding method according to claim 7, wherein the processing and forwarding of the data comprises: controlling transmission quality.

[10] The forwarding method according to claim 7, wherein the processing and forwarding of the data comprises: performing unified management on the public resources.