Supporting IPv6 - The Easy Way
IP Infusion

Equipment vendors are in a constant struggle to keep up with the massive number of changes in the industry’s RFCs and drafts. In 2003 alone, the IETF issued 263 new RFCs. Furthermore, discontinuous changes abound, such as the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, which requires a complete code re-write in some cases. How is an equipment vendor supposed to keep up? Vendors face a number of choices. Hiring ever increasing numbers of R&D staff, unfortunately, is not an option in our new age of cost- conscious, rapid time-to-market development mandates. Rather than outsource overseas, why not try to outsource “in house?”

Outsourcing “in house” means getting single components of the system from third-party vendors, to reduce the overall R&D effort. Don’t send everything to a difficult-to-manage offshore location, but rather keep it under your control and in house. Vendors are familiar with off-the-shelf operating systems, such as Wind River, MontaVista, etc.; network processors; and switching chips. IP Infusion offers off-the-shelf layer-2 and layer-3 IP routing and switching software. The ZebOS® Advanced Routing Suite is a scalable, robust, and standards-based Layer 2 and Layer 3 carrier-class routing and switching software solution that allows OEMs to rapidly add networking capabilities to their new and existing lines of communication products. Its modular, platform-independent architecture enables OEMs to pick from among an extensive array of protocols and solutions to add to their equipment. The ZebOS Advanced Routing Suite supports industry standard and best-of-breed operating systems, control and data plane processors. Although a control plane network software solution, it has been architected to take advantage of separate data plane processors (NPUs and ASICs) to support highly modular and scalable communications equipment.

Equipment vendors typically face two development approaches when they build a new system leveraging third-party components: 1) build on existing code base; or, 2) start over from scratch. The first approach is to build on top of their existing software code base. This ensures compatibility across the entire product family, a common management interface, reduced training for the sales and support staff, and a sense of reduced risk (the base code is stable, so now if we just add these few extra components…). IP Infusion’s modular architecture is ideal for these situations. Down to the protocol level, IP Infusion has the industry’s first truly modular routing and switching software platform. Each protocol (BGP-4+, OSPFv3, RIPng, etc.) is a stand-alone product with its own software libraries and APIs. A protocol can be licensed as an individual component (such as only OSPFv3) or as a group of individual components (such as RIPng, OSPFv3, BGP4+, etc). The vendors can take only those protocols they need, and add on the extra protocols they required on top of their base code. An example of a vendor that took this approach is Foundry Networks. Foundry Networks licensed IP Infusion’s IPv6 protocols for use in its line of high performance Layer 2 - 7 switching and Internet routing products.

The second approach is to build from scratch. The vendor typically has a legacy code base but may decide to build their new products from scratch for a number of reasons. First, major discontinuous changes, such as the change from the IPv4 to IPv6 addressing scheme, can render many architectures obsolete. It may be more trouble changing the legacy architecture than starting afresh with a new IPv6-enabled architecture. A downside with starting afresh is that the vendors may have numerous products in the marketplace that their customers and sales and support staffs are all used to. A new product with a new management interface would require re-training everyone and sending notices/upgrades to each customer. This may not be acceptable for many companies. To solve this problem, IP Infusion offers an extensible management interface. The equipment vendor can replace the core code in its products, but keep their look and feel by leveraging this management interface. The equipment vendor can also advance to IP Infusion-based IPv4 and IPv6 architectures while keeping their own look and feel as well.

Another issue that equipment vendors face when upgrading is dealing with legacy ASICs and proprietary operating systems. IP Infusion provides solutions that are pre-ported to major operating system and packet processing chip architectures. How can IP Infusion’s solution work with a proprietary ASIC or OS? IP Infusion provides a set of abstraction layers to allow rapid integration with proprietary components. First, IP Infusion has a platform abstraction layer (PAL) that allows for rapid porting to any new operating system. Second, IP Infusion had a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) that allow for rapid integration into new chip architectures.

IP Infusion offers the most comprehensive set of integrated Layer 2 and Layer 3 carrier-class routing and switching software suites for networking equipment. The ZebOS Advanced Routing Suite delivers robust, scalable, modular building blocks, such as IPv4, IPv6, MPLS and advanced Layer 2 switching protocols, to meet the needs of most L2 and L3 applications. The IPv4 and IPv6 unicast and multicast protocols include OSPF, BGP, IS-IS, RIP, PIM-SM and PIM-DM. IP Infusion offers a set of IPv4 to IPv6 transition software packages, including 6to4, ISATAP, GRE, and IPIP tunneling support. These protocols offer a mechanism for vendors to provide their users with methods for simultaneously supporting both IPv4 and IPv6. The suite also provides virtual routing, MPLS Traffic Engineering, MPLS-VPN (L2, L3), and advanced layer 2 and VLAN switching protocols.

IP Infusion offers an alternative that complements in-house R&D in a world where it is increasingly difficult to keep up with the myriad of networking standard changes. IPv6 is a good example of a major change in the networking space where IP Infusion’s dual IPv4/IPv6 architecture can help equipment vendors bridge the gap, reduce costs and increase time to market. For more information about IP Infusion, please see www.ipinfusion.com.