David P. Sonnier

Implementing High-Performance, High-Value Traffic Management Using Agere Network Processor Solutions

Publisher Summary Traffic management (TM) is one of the most important functions performed by a network switching or routing system. It enables systems to adjust traffic flows, prioritize specific traffic, and react to a wide range of network traffic conditions. Sophisticated TM solutions are necessary for congestion management and differentiated services to maximize the value of traffic carried by the network during congestion. Although pure software implementations do not meet the required line-rate requirements, pure hardware implementations with no programmable parameters do not meet the scalability and flexibility needs of current and future networks. Finding the right balance is the key to building a system with the flexibility and performance to fulfill current and future network TM challenges. A hybrid traffic management architecture is both flexible and scalable. A hybrid solution partitions TM functions into hardware implemented mechanisms with software-programmable policies, yielding the right balance between performance and flexibility.