WO2017193721A1

WO2017193721A1 - Modular router

Info

Publication number: WO2017193721A1
Application number: PCT/CN2017/078413
Authority: WO
Inventors: 张远望
Original assignee: 中兴通讯股份有限公司
Priority date: 2016-05-11
Filing date: 2017-03-28
Publication date: 2017-11-16
Also published as: CN107370681A

Abstract

Disclosed is a modular router, comprising at least one packet forwarding unit and a switching unit. The packet forwarding unit is connected to the switching unit by means of a cable. By means of implementation of the present invention, a common integrated router in the form of a subrack in the prior art is split into a plurality of modular packet forwarding units and a centralized switching unit, and connection is implemented by means of a cable instead of a back plate. In this way, the number and locations of the packet forwarding units are no longer limited by the back plate in the subrack, so that the problems of limited capacity and scale of the existing routing system are solved. Optionally, heat dissipation design is considered independently for each packet forwarding unit, so that the effect of system-level heat dissipation design is avoided, and the reliability is improved.

Description

a modular router

Technical field

The present invention relates to the field of communication device applications, and in particular, to a modular router.

Background technique

With the development of optical interconnect technology, the speed of the high-speed bus in the current communication equipment is getting higher and higher, and the bandwidth of the communication equipment of the aggregation and core nodes is increasing, and both are integrated plug-in or cluster systems; The consumption is getting higher and higher, and heat dissipation has become the bottleneck of routing system design.

Optical interconnects are mainly used to solve the problem of shorter and shorter channel lengths caused by higher and higher backplane bus speeds. Traditional electrical backplanes have become a key technology or bottleneck for high-capacity switches and router designs. At present, the main solutions of optical interconnection are optical waveguide backplane, optical fiber flexible board or direct optical fiber interconnection. However, the current problem of optical waveguide is that the loss of waveguide material is still large, and the process of optical waveguide backplane and optical fiber flexible board is not yet Too mature, the use of optical fiber interconnection is relatively mature; at the same time, optical connectors used in optical interconnected boards are not yet able to meet the requirements of vertical mode; optical interface boards are serialized compared to traditional electrical backplanes, with small capacity. The cost of the plug-in box has no advantage; the other is that the system's heat-dissipation bottleneck is prominent in the large system. The power consumption of the cooling fan is a whole due to the system air duct, and the board is less wasteful when it is configured; the cost of the optical interconnect is also very expensive.

Aiming at the above problems, a modular router architecture is proposed to solve the problem that the capacity and scale of the existing routing system are limited, which is a technical problem to be solved by those skilled in the art.

Summary of the invention

The present invention provides a modular router to solve the problem of limited capacity and scale of existing routing systems.

The present invention provides a modular router comprising: at least one packet forwarding unit, and a switching unit, the packet forwarding unit and the switching unit being connected by a cable.

Optionally, the working mode of the switching unit is a single-level mode.

Optionally, the packet forwarding unit includes an independent heat dissipation module and a power supply.

Optionally, the heat dissipation module includes a heat dissipation fan and a heat pipe, and the heat pipe is configured to connect the heat dissipation chip in the package forwarding unit, and guide the heat of the heat dissipation chip to the air outlet position of the heat dissipation fan.

Optionally, the packet forwarding unit is provided with two processing boards.

Optionally, the packet forwarding unit is further included in the board optical module, and the board optical module is configured to connect the switching unit through the optical connector.

Optionally, the switching unit includes a switching network board, a main control board, a power supply, and a cooling fan.

Optionally, the number of switching stencils matches the number of packet forwarding units.

Optionally, the switching network board is provided with multiple switching network chips and optical module interfaces, and the serial bus connected to the same optical module interface is connected to each switching network chip.

Optionally, the packet forwarding unit and the switching unit are all provided with a standard optical module interface; the cable includes a cable and an optical fiber, and the packet forwarding unit and the switching unit are connected according to a distance, and the cable or optical fiber connection is used based on the standard optical module interface.

The beneficial effects of the invention:

The present invention provides a modular router, which is divided into a plurality of modular packet forwarding units and centralized switching units by using an integrated plug-in type router commonly used in the prior art, and is connected by a cable instead of a backplane. In this way, the number and location of the packet forwarding units are no longer subject to the backplane in the plugged box, which solves the problem of limited capacity and scale of the existing routing system. Optionally, each packet forwarding unit independently considers the heat dissipation design, and the mutual influence of the system-level heat dissipation design also increases the reliability.

DRAWINGS

1 is a schematic structural diagram of a modular router according to a first embodiment of the present invention;

2 is a schematic structural diagram of a modular router according to a second embodiment of the present invention;

3 is a schematic structural diagram of a packet forwarding unit in a second embodiment of the present invention;

4 is a schematic structural view of an exchange unit in a second embodiment of the present invention.

detailed description

The technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention are clearly and completely described in the following with reference to the accompanying drawings in the embodiments of the present invention. It is obvious that the described embodiments are only a part of the embodiments of the present invention, but not all embodiments. All other embodiments obtained by those skilled in the art based on the embodiments of the present invention without creative efforts are within the scope of the present invention.

The invention will now be further illustrated by way of specific embodiments in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

First embodiment:

FIG. 1 is a schematic structural diagram of a modular router according to a first embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1 , in the embodiment, the modular router provided by the present invention includes: at least one packet forwarding unit 101 and an exchange unit 102. The packet forwarding unit 101 and the switching unit 102 are connected by a cable.

In some embodiments, the operating mode of the switching unit in the above embodiment is a single-level mode. In this way, the switching network only needs to work in a single-level mode, which saves half of the switching network chips compared to the cluster system.

In some embodiments, the packet forwarding unit 101 in the above embodiment includes an independent heat dissipation module and a power supply. In this way, each packet forwarding unit independently considers the heat dissipation design, and the mutual influence of the system-level heat dissipation design also increases the reliability.

In some embodiments, the heat dissipation module in the above embodiment includes a heat dissipation fan and a heat pipe, and the heat pipe is disposed to connect the heat dissipation chip in the package forwarding unit to guide the heat of the heat dissipation chip to the tuyere position of the heat dissipation fan. In this way, the heat dissipation effect of the packet forwarding unit is better.

In some embodiments, the packet forwarding unit 101 in the above embodiment further includes a hardware management module, and the hardware management module is connected through a serial management bus.

In some embodiments, the packet forwarding unit 101 in the above embodiment further includes a synchronous clock input interface that is connected by a coaxial or dual-axis cable.

In some embodiments, the packet forwarding unit 101 in the above embodiment is provided with a two-layer processing board.

In some embodiments, the packet forwarding unit 101 in the above embodiment further includes a board optical module, and the board optical module is disposed to connect the switching unit through the optical connector. In practical applications, depending on the application scenario, for example, if the data capacity to be processed is too large and the rear panel space is insufficient, the board optical module can be used to connect the switching unit through the optical connector to solve the problem.

In some embodiments, the switching unit 102 in the foregoing embodiment includes a switching network board, a main control board, a power supply, and a cooling fan.

In some embodiments, the number of switching stencils in the above embodiments matches the number of packet forwarding units. In this way, different numbers of switching network boards can be configured to connect different numbers of packet forwarding units.

In some embodiments, the switching network board in the foregoing embodiment is provided with a plurality of switching network chips and an optical module interface, and the serial bus interfaces connected to the same optical module are equally connected to the switching network chips.

In some embodiments, the packet forwarding unit 101 and the switching unit 102 in the foregoing embodiments are all provided with a standard optical module interface; the cable includes a cable and an optical fiber, and the packet forwarding unit 101 and the switching unit 102 are based on a distance, based on a standard optical module. The interface uses a cable or fiber connection.

Second embodiment:

The present invention will be further explained in conjunction with specific application scenarios.

The high-speed bus speed of communication equipment is getting higher and higher, and there is a trend toward optical interconnection; the convergence bandwidth of communication equipment of aggregation and core nodes is increasing, and all are integrated plug-in or cluster systems; The higher the heat has become the bottleneck of system design. Optical interconnects are mainly used to solve the problem of shorter and shorter channel lengths caused by higher and higher backplane bus speeds. Traditional electrical backplanes have become a key technology or bottleneck for high-capacity switches and router designs. The main solutions of optical interconnection include optical waveguide backplane, optical fiber flexible board or direct optical fiber interconnection. The current problem of optical waveguide is that the loss of waveguide material is still large, and the process of optical waveguide backplane and optical fiber flexible board is still not mature. The fiber optic interconnects are relatively mature. At the same time, the optical connectors used in optical interconnects are not well suited to the vertical mode. Optical serial boards are serialized compared to traditional electrical backplanes. The cost of the small-capacity plug-in box has no advantage; the other is that the system's heat-dissipation bottleneck is prominent in the large system. The power consumption of the cooling fan is a whole due to the system air duct, and the board is less wasteful when it is configured; the cost of the optical interconnect is also very expensive;

This embodiment designs a new modular architecture and the overall hardware of the communication equipment based on the architecture, which solves the high cost of the high-speed system, the optical waveguide technology and the optical connector are immature, the optical interconnection series has low cost performance, heat dissipation difficulty and system capacity. Problems such as limited size.

In a practical application, the modular architecture provided by the embodiment splits the integrated plug-in into a plurality of modular packet forwarding units and a centralized switching unit, and the connection is implemented by replacing the backplane with a cable. As shown in Figure 2, the following parts are included:

In the figure, 101 is a packet forwarding unit, which is composed of a packet processing board and an interface card. The interface card can be designed to be modular and flexible for configuration. 102 shows an integrated switching unit, which is composed of a switching network board 105 and a main control board. 106, the power supply 107, the fan 108 and the like; the switching network board and the packet forwarding unit pass the standard optical module interface (such as QSFP28, CXP, etc.), use the optical fiber or close distance (usually less than 6 meters) when using the cable connection, As shown in the figure 103, in order to realize the control and management of the packet processing unit of the main control board in the integrated switching network unit, an Ethernet connection is used; in order to enhance the reliability of the system, a hardware management module can also be added, through the serial management bus. Connection (such as CAN, RS485, etc.); if the system requires the clock, you can also add a synchronous clock input interface, and connect through coaxial cable or dual-axis cable, as shown in Figure 2, 104.

The heat dissipation of the packet forwarding unit 101 is the key, but only the heat dissipation of one unit is considered, and the heat dissipation of the system is solved. The heat pipe can be used to transfer heat to the air outlet to increase the heat dissipation efficiency. In order to select a suitable fan, the heat dissipation of the fan is increased. For the effect, the box structure of the forwarding unit can also be considered to use a height of 2U.

A modular router based on this modular architecture, the system is connected to Figure 2 and connected using the CXP interface.

The packet forwarding unit 101 is designed as shown in FIG. 3, and optionally supports four or eight interface daughter cards, see 201; 202 is a cooling fan. Because the power of the key chip is large, the heat pipe can be used to guide the heat to the air outlet position to improve heat dissipation; 203 is a DC power supply unit; 204 is an Ethernet interface for communication. In the actual design, it can support 2 layers of processing boards, and the maximum scalable support 8T processing bandwidth; if the rear panel space is tight, BOA (Board Mount Optical Assembly) can be used to connect to the rear panel through optical connectors.

Figure 4 shows the switching network board, 301 is the CXP optical module interface (2X12 way), and 302 is the switching network chip. In order to connect more packet forwarding units, two chips are required to output half of the serdes bus to the same light. Module, this scheme supports up to 24 packet forwarding units.

This embodiment provides a modular hardware architecture and a communication device implemented based on the architecture, which can effectively solve the various problems described above. mainly includes:

1. This modular architecture can implement flexible configuration, which is convenient for serialization and solves the problem of low cost performance of optical interface boards for small insertion boxes. Each packet forwarding unit is a separate router, and 2-3 units can be connected by a full mesh; different numbers of packet forwarding units can be connected to the integrated switching network unit, and different numbers of switching network boards can be configured to meet different configuration requirements;

2. The use of fiber optic interconnection avoids the problem of the immature technology and process of the optical waveguide backplane, and also eliminates the cost of using the backplane and the limitation of the high-speed channel length;

3. The use of a standard optical module interface instead of the use of optical connectors, avoiding the incomplete series, the orthogonal optical connector technology is immature and the need to customize;

4. Each packet forwarding unit independently considers the heat dissipation design, without the mutual influence of the system-level heat dissipation design, and also increases the reliability. The heat dissipation problem of one unit is solved, and the heat dissipation problem of the system is also solved;

5. For the smaller configuration, you can consider using standard CXP and QSFP28 cable connections instead of optical connections, which can save connection costs.

6. The system scale is not subject to the insertion box constraint, and the system with larger bandwidth can be configured. The example of this patent can support 24 packet forwarding units, and the total processing bandwidth of the system can reach 192Tbps. If the switching network board increases the switching network chip, it can also support more. Large system. Compared with the cluster system, the design of the large system plug-in is also omitted. The switching network only needs to work in the single-level mode, eliminating half of the switching network chips.

The modular architecture is mainly shown in Figure 2. The standard optical module interface is adopted, and the flexible configuration of the system is realized through modularization to meet the system's continuously increasing exchange bus speed. The requirements of the system, and the cost of control is within an acceptable range.

The system can use the traditional router multi-level multi-plane switching (CLOS) architecture and chipset implementation, or use the super-cloud router's spine-leaf architecture to control and manage each unit through lossless Ethernet. Realize control, separation of forwarding planes, etc.

The implementation of the packet processing unit 101 mainly focuses on the optical interconnection interface, and selects an appropriate interface form according to the switching capacity of the module to meet bandwidth and panel space requirements. The heat dissipation of the packet forwarding unit is another important point, and the heat dissipation needs to be optimized according to the power consumption and internal layout of the chip. Meet the requirements; management, control plane communication interface and hardware management interface, clock interface, etc. can be arranged according to the needs.

The design of the switch board is the choice of the optical interface. You need to refer to the choice of the packet forwarding unit. If there are multiple switching network chips, you should also pay attention to the bus division of different switching network chips to each optical module to facilitate supporting more packages. Forwarding unit.

When the connection distance is close, the choice of the dual-axis cable assembly instead of the fiber-optic cable connection can save the connection cost. The standard optical module interface basically has the corresponding cable assembly. The QSFP28 is more suitable at the 25G rate, and the CXP cable is thicker, but the QSFP28 is It will bring more problems in occupying panel space, and it needs to be comprehensively selected according to the plan and requirements.

In summary, through the implementation of the present invention, at least the following beneficial effects exist:

The present invention provides a modular router, which is divided into a plurality of modular packet forwarding units and centralized switching units by using an integrated plug-in type router commonly used in the prior art, and is connected by a cable instead of a backplane. In this way, the number and location of the packet forwarding units are no longer subject to the backplane in the plugged box, which solves the problem of limited capacity and scale of the existing routing system.

Optionally, each packet forwarding unit independently considers the heat dissipation design, and the mutual influence of the system-level heat dissipation design also increases the reliability.

The above is only a specific embodiment of the present invention, and is not intended to limit the present invention in any way. Any simple modification, equivalent change, combination or modification of the above embodiments in accordance with the technical spirit of the present invention is still in the present invention. The scope of protection of the technical solution of the invention.

Industrial applicability

As described above, the modular router provided by the embodiment of the present invention has the following beneficial effects: the problem of the capacity and scale of the existing routing system is solved. Optionally, each packet forwarding unit independently considers the heat dissipation design, and has no system. The interaction of the thermal design of the stage increases the reliability.

Claims

A modular router includes: at least one packet forwarding unit, and a switching unit, the packet forwarding unit and the switching unit being connected by a cable.
The modular router of claim 1 wherein said switching unit operates in a single-level mode.
The modular router of claim 1 wherein each packet forwarding unit comprises an independent heat dissipation module and a power supply.
The modular router according to claim 3, wherein the heat dissipation module comprises a heat dissipation fan and a heat pipe, the heat pipe is configured to connect a heat dissipation chip in the package forwarding unit, and guide heat of the heat dissipation chip to the heat dissipation The position of the tuyere of the fan.
The modular router of claim 3 wherein said packet forwarding unit is provided with a two layer processing board.
The modular router of claim 3 wherein said packet forwarding unit is further comprised in a panel light module, said onboard optical module being arranged to connect said switching unit via an optical connector.
The modular router of claim 1 wherein said switching unit comprises a switching network board, a main control board, a power supply, and a cooling fan.
The modular router of claim 7 wherein the number of said switching stencils matches the number of said packet forwarding units.
The modular router according to claim 7, wherein the switching network board is provided with a plurality of switching network chips and an optical module interface, and the serial buses connected to the same optical module are equally connected to the switching network chips.
The modular router according to any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein the packet forwarding unit and the switching unit are each provided with a standard optical module interface; Including the cable and the optical fiber, the packet forwarding unit and the switching unit are connected by using a cable or an optical fiber based on the standard optical module interface according to the distance.