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Universal Ethernet

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Saturday, 16 January 2010 00:00

Universal Ethernet

A New Layer-2 End-to-End Ethernet-Only
Communications Architecture

An abstract

Written by Jose Morales Barroso

Content Disclaimer

The Universal Ethernet Telecommunications Service (UETS) is a highly scalable Layer 2 based network architecture, protocol, and addressing schema, which will support a wide range of services and access technologies to deliver the capacity required for future network applications with greatly improved security and robustness to support the massive amount of traffic related to quadruple-play services of the next generation network.

Ethernet Fabric Routing (EFR) is a new generation high-capacity physical switching technique, based on the utilization of local MAC addresses, indicated with the U/L bit fixed to one, and assigned to every physical interface as implicit labels with global, not local, meaning. The terminals does not use its own universal address, as in conventional LANs, but the switch's port physical address, as in the old telephone Central Offices.

The new network node concept, named Central Universal Ethernet (CUE), performs the switching by means of Banyan networks [1], the less complex and most scalable interconnection topology, that can handle throughputs of tens to hundreds of terabits per second with a very small size, high packing density, and an extremely low power consumption and heat dissipation, to fully exploit the combination of electronic and optical technologies.

A New L2 End-to-End Ethernet-Only Communications Architecture

The Universal Ethernet Telecommunications Service (UETS) [2] [3] defines a new Layer-2 Ethernet-Only Communications Architecture, which uses link layer protocols for end to end transport, reducing the complexity of the Network to an astonishing simplicity. Only two protocols, put together in different patterns make, essentially, everything: Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 transports the information, and UETS-DL/IEEE 802.2 performs the control. This layer-2 architecture is inherently multiprotocol, supporting transport of inherited traffic, such as IPv4, IPv6, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, IPX, NetBIOS, SNA, X.25, etc...

Layer-2 Ethernet-only Communications Architecture - Protocol Stack

The UETS physical network offers:

- a telecommunications service in connectionless datagram as well as connection oriented circuit modes,

- multipoint-to-multipoint and multiprotocol,

- end-to-end transport using a layer 2 protocol based on IEEE Std. 802.2,

   - a network that uses exclusively Ethernet frames (IEEE Std. 802.3) routed to their destination by means
      of “locally administered” MAC addresses, with the U/L bit set to one, taking advantage of standards (no
      need any IEEE 802 standard change),

- assignment to every physical interface in order to permit inherent security and switching by physical
hardware-based layer (Banyan matrix or similar switches),

- no frame modification and no need for routing tables, since the destination address is used as the
routing information.

Direct switching of unmodified Ethernet frames by hardware, with a mechanism similar to that used in ATM, but without signaling, switching tables, nor headers swapping.

To define any telecommunications architecture, as the UETS is, it is necessary to describe the functionality of the basic elements common to all telecommunications services networks (such as ISDN, X.25, Frame Relay, ATM, etc.):

Data Terminal Equipment (DTE): Terminal Universal Ethernet (TUE)
Data Communications Equipment (DCE): TerminatoR Universal Ethernet (TRUE)
Data Switching Equipment (DSE): Central Universal Ethernet (CUE)

That is to say, the Universal Ethernet Telecommunications Service defines the Reference Model of a new Architecture, composed by:

Protocols:

IEEE Std. 802.3 Ethernet with local addresses

IEEE Std.802.2 LLC based protocol, named UETS-D

Network Elements:

TUE, user terminal

TRUE, demarcation device

CUE, network switching node

Relationship among generic network elements (DTE, DCE, and DSE), and specific elements of the UETS Architecture (TUE, TRUE and CUE), as well as the use of “local administered” MAC addresses to identify the physical nodes interfaces.

Summary

UETS takes root in the utilization of the following points together:

1. Global Communications Architecture using data link-layer protocols for end-to-end transport over an Ethernet-only network, which guarantees fully efficient and energy saving service for data traffic, voice communications, broadband multimedia services and mobility.

2. MAC addresses assigned to each physical interface from the “locally administered” address space (with U/L bit set to one, in accordance with IEEE Std. 802 and Std. 802.3), which in combination with physical hardware-based layer switching allows for more than 70 trillion addresses.

3. Hierarchical addressing (Ethernet Fabric Routing), in which the network terminator (not the user's terminal) has assigned an address by the network switching node according to its physical location and connection to switch port.

4. Inherent security, the hierarchical and port-related address structure, fixed by the network switching node, makes their falsification impossible.

5. Switching along the entire path by means of the destination address, fixed by this hierarchical structure, as implicit switching label.

6. A switching process free of table lookup, and therefore switches with no need to create and maintain dynamic switching tables.

7. Independence from higher level protocol, providing fully transparent multiprotocol support.

8. Support for point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and multipoint-to-multipoint connectivity over a connectionless datagram network.

9. Great Communications Architecture's simplification, which allows to multiply by four link utilization, and to increase more than one order of magnitude the switching speed comparing with current IP networks, saving at the same time a huge amount of energy, and providing the means for the New Generation, real-time Terabit Broadband Services.

All these features are radically different in design, functioning and operation, in respect of the known means used for the same purpose in the present state of the art.

References

[1] M. Baldi, Y. Ofek, Multi-Terabit/s IP Switching with Guaranteed Service for Streaming Traffic. IEEE INFOCOM 2006 - The Terabit Challenge. April 2006.

[2] Jose Morales Barroso, Universal Ethernet Telecommunications Service. Anales de Mecánica y Electricidad, Enero 2005, pp. 48-54.

[3] José Morales Barroso, From Computer Networks to the Computer on Net. IEEE Communications Magazine / Global Communications Newsletter, October 2005, pp. 2-4.

[4] Jose Morales Barroso, UETS: Towards a new layer 2 based Internet. Exploiting the Knowledge Economy. IOS Press – European Commission, October 2006, pp. 1615-1622.

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