Gigabit Network Research

Gigabit Network Research
Currently, the NREN community has access to a variety of networks operating at a speeds ranging
From those obtained with dial-up modem (14.4 Kbps) to high – speed LANs (100 Mbps). In the
Realm of wide area networks, regional networks typically offer 1.5 Mbps access lines and national
Level back bone networks such as the NSFNET, and other networks operated by the government
Offers 45 Mbps. It is recognized that gigabit networking infra-structure during the next decade.
In light of this, gigabit network research has two goals: (1) to advance the technology and
understanding of requirements for high – speed networking by developing architectural alternatives in determining for possible structure of a next generation wide area gigabit network, and (2) to explore the potential applications for such a network that are of importance to business and society in general. Applications for gigabit networks will probably evolve from various experimental applications being developed in universities and in government and industrial research test beds.
High – Speed Gigabit Wide Area Network Architecture
Creating a wide area gigabit network is expected to require major departures from existing network technology along several dimensions:
• The network speed will over whelm the processing capabilities of most existing supercomputers and workstations. Existing operating systems and protocols will be unable to respond quickly without radical design changes
• Since the total delay across a gigabit network is expected to be small, applications requiring large bandwidth and whose quality deteriorates with delays are enabled easily. Applications such as video conferencing requiring the exchange of large amounts of data at regular intervals can be deployed.
• The volume of data in the networks can be huge. The task of managing the reliable flow of such large amounts of data in a network environment with thousands of users requires research in algorithm for storage, routing, and retransmission required to recover from anomalies such as errors, fail – user, and congestion.
• Switching protocols must be designed and developed that can operate at gigabit speeds while dealing with the propagation delays and processing constraints specific to gigabit networks. New switches will be required that have the ability to handle traffic loads of several gigabits per second (or more) and to switch millions of application data representing the combined traffic load.
In short, although gigabit networks can provide many benefits and enabled new applications that are required in a information – dominated society, they also pose many technical challenges. The physical layer of the gigabit network (cabling and wiring) may well be the simplest of these hurdles to overcome. In addition to physical data transport, network running at this speed requires changes in almost every network element at all levels to eliminate bottlenecks that reduce the speed of information flow. This will require major architectural changes in workstation hosts, packet switches, gateways, and routers, both in hardware design and software.