Open Programmable Layer-3 Networking Hardware Approach for Full Active Network

This paper discusses high speed (multi-gigabits/second) active networking techniques used to introduce active functionality into layer-3 processing in order to provide wide-ranging flexibility to intemetworking. We propose here StreamCode, a compact object code for layer-3 programming, a StreamCode Processor that achieves a high-speed execution of the object code, and an architecture of StreamCode-based high-speed active networking node. The processor has a unique instruction fetch mechanism to prevail over promiscuous instructions and data flows inside the processor, and has resource management function to execute StreamCode programs safely. Our FPGA based prototype system with sample applications confirmed the feasibility of proposed StreamCode based programmable Layer-3 networking.