On Wed, Oct 03, 2012 at 06:59:20PM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
Where's Noel Chiappa when you need him?
(2) The new protocol will use variable-length address for the Host portion, such as used in the addresses of CLNP,
This also was considered during the IPv6 design phase, and the router designers had a collective cow, as it makes ASIC design a whole lot more interesting. And back then, line speed was a lot lower than it is now...
Not saying it can't be done - but you're basically going to have to do CLNP style handling at 400Gbits or 1Tbit. Better get those ASIC designers a *lot* of caffeine, they're gonna need it...
Except that these will be pure photonic networks, and apart from optical delay lines for your packet buffer you'd better be able to make a routing (switching) decision while few bits of the header have streamed by your photonic router circuit. There is no time for any table look-ups, obviously. And optical gates are *really* expensive, so better use few of them. And don't add too many gate delays, too. Above describes your setting for the next protocol. There is not a lot of leeway in design space, I'm afraid.