Protocol agnostic switching
In one embodiment, an apparatus comprises a switch fabric, an adaptation processor to append a length field to a received packet, and a switch fabric to use information in the length field to switch variable-sized packets.
1. A computer-based apparatus for packet adaptation, comprising:
a switch fabric;
an adaptation processor to append a length field to a received packet;
a framing/byte-interleaving module to interleave the packet into a timeslot in a framing structure; and
a switch fabric to use information in the length field to switch variable-sized packets.
2. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the adaptation processor assigns a flow identifier to the received packet.
3. The apparatus of claim 2 , wherein:
the switch fabric includes a flow identifier table; and
the flow identifier table includes a pointer to a memory location associated with the switch fabric for the received packet.
4. The apparatus of claim 3 , wherein the switch fabric writes the memory location to an output queue associated with an output port.
5. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the adaptation processor is coupled to the switch fabric via a request-less interface.
6. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the adaptation processor comprises a flow manager module to assign a priority to the received packet.
7. A computer-based method for packet adaptation, comprising:
receiving a packet into a processor;
appending a length field to the packet;
appending a flow identifier to the packet;
byte-interleaving the packet into a timeslot in a framing structure' and
transmitting the packet to a switch fabric.
8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising:
receiving the packet in the switch fabric; and
using the flow id entifier to select a location in memory to store the packet.
9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising writing the packet to the memory location.
10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising writing the memory location to an output port associated with the switch fabric.
11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising switching the packet to the output port.
12. The method of claim 7 , wherein the length field identifies the length of the payload section of the data packet.
13. A computer-based method of packet adaptation, comprising:
receiving a packet into an adaptation processor;
retrieving a flow identifier from the packet;
selecting an output port using the flow identifier; and
mapping the packet to the output port; and
byte-interleaving the packet into a timeslot in a framing structure.
14. The method of claim 13 , further comprising performing an error check operation on the received packet.
15. The method of claim 13 , further comprising transmitting the packet.
16. A computer-based system for packet adaptation, comprising:
a first line card;
a backplane interface;
a second line card communicatively coupled to the first line card via the backplane interface and comprising a processor capable to append a length field to a received packet;
a framing/byte-interleaving module to interleave the packet into a timeslot in a framing structure;
a switch fabric to use information in the length field to switch variable-sized packets.
17. The system of claim 16 , wherein the backplane interface operates using a request-less communication protocol.
18. The system of claim 16 , wherein the second line card further comprises an adaptation processor assigns a flow identifier to the received packet.
19. The apparatus of claim 16 , wherein:
the switch fabric includes a flow identifier table; and
the flow identifier table includes a pointer to a memory location associated with the switch fabric for the received packet.
20. The apparatus of claim 16 , wherein the switch fabric includes a queue manager to manage a memory module in the switch fabric.
21. The apparatus of claim 20 , wherein the queue manager regulates traffic flow through the switch fabric.