Packet Switching IC Enhances IP Routing

Designed for Layer 2, 3 and 4 packet forwarding and filtering in LANs, the DS313 packet switching IC includes 12 Fast Ethernet ports and one Gigabit port. The device is said to enhance IP routing via its quality of service (QoS), Layer 3 routing, IP Multicast, protocol filtering, port mirroring and trunking, buffer management, and stacking features. The QoS is needed to control the network services of applications and time-sensitive traffic, such as voice and video. The IC sorts the incoming traffic and prioritizes the output into four different QoS classifications based on L4 TCP/UDP source or destination port number. Once the packets are mapped into a queue, they are scheduled using strict priority, weighted round robin, or dynamic priority transmission control. The DS313 provides full wire-speed Layer 3 IP switching by performing IP address searches based on the longest prefix match. It supports up to 22,000 IP subnets per chip or 64,000 MAC per chip and per system. A unique interface, called Xpipe, allows multiple DS313s to be interconnected using a switch fabric chip. Up to eight devices can be connected through this 3.2-Gb/s interface to form a non-blocking Layer 3 switch. A complete design kit is available and is priced at $6,000.