Xelerated Data Plane Software

Jumpstarting Carrier Ethernet Designs - MEA and UFA

Xelerated offers feature-rich data plane software for its network processors (NPU). These software products contain two parts: a forwarding plane application running on the NPU, and a corresponding control plane-API running on the CPU. The control plane-API utilizes a common hardware adaptation layer providing boot scripts, configuration modules and defined messages to access the forwarding plane from the control plane. It provides a stateless interface for adaptation to vendor specific control planes. The hardware abstraction layer is developed for Linux on Power-PC, however can easily be ported to other operating systems.

 

Xelerated's Metro Ethernet (MEA) and Unified Fiber Access (UFA) data plane products are provided in source code for easy customization to vendor specific control and management planes.

Metro Ethernet Application (MEA)

Metro Ethernet and Carrier Ethernet standards continue to evolve quickly to support new services and make metro networking more efficient. These standards are being enhanced by IEEE, MEF, Broadband Forum, ITU and IETF, and with service providers adopting different service models, system vendors are continuously pushed to offer more features.

The Metro Ethernet Application (MEA) offers an attractive solution. MEA has been developed with feature flexibility in mind, and provides a feature-rich and robust data plane software in compliance to Carrier Ethernet standards, saving development time and costs.

MEA gives system vendors a best-of-breed data plane software, used either as-is for production systems; or as a foundation for further enhancements with differentiating features - utilizing the programmability of Xelerated's NPUs.

Developed in close co-operation with Xelerated's customers, the MEA software has been tailored, enhanced and tested to support customer specific service provider requirements. Today, the software is shipping in a range of systems, e.g. Carrier Ethernet Switch/Routers, Metro Transport switches, Edge Routers, EPON/GPON OLTs, Enterprise backbone switches, and DSLAM aggregation systems.

Each second, around the clock, the MEA data plane software processes millions and millions of packets in some of the world's largest service provider networks.

MEA Highlights

  • Shipping since 2003, MEA is the most mature Metro Ethernet Data Plane software on the market today
  • Integrated with multiple Control and Management Plane stacks
  • Feature-rich and standards compliant foundation for system vendors to use either as-is for production systems; or as a basis for customization to vendor differentiating features
  • Robust C API, future proof for next-generation NPU devices, leverages SW investment across platforms
  • Wirespeed performance - fundamental for stable service provisioning and for maintaining SLAs
  • Supports a wide range of memory devices including lookaside microcode, simulation models and table management SW
  • Accelerates time-to-market. Software development time savings of 6-12 months
  • Reduces development cost between 1-2 MUSD
  • Maintenance including continuous feature enhancements
  • Data structures in standard ANSI-C, ensuring consistency between control plane and forwarding plane
  • Currently supported on X11, easy migration from the X11 to the HX family of NPUs
  • Supported on all X11 Reference Designs - RDK3, RDK4 and Metro Ethernet Design Switch

MEA Key Features

  • L2 switching
  • L3 routing (IPv4/IPv6)
  • Provider bridging (IEEE 802.1ad)
  • Provider backbone bridging (PBB, IEEE 802.1ah)
  • Provider backbone traffic engineering (PBB-TE, IEEE 802.1ay, PBT)
  • VPLS
  • PWE3
  • MPLS LER/LSR
  • L2/L3 Multicast
  • IP Tunneling (IP-IP, GRE)
  • L2/L3 VPN
  • HW based OAM (IEEE 802.1ag and ITU-T Y.1731)
  • Continuity check and remote loopback (IEEE 802.3ah)
  • Link aggregation (IEEE802.3ad), ECMP
  • Rapid reconfiguration of spanning trees and multiples spanning trees (IEEE
  • 8021.w/IEEE 802.1s)
  • Security and QoS ACLs
  • IGMP Snooping
  • HW based MAC learning
  • Dual rate Metering (MEF and IETF)
  • Counters and Statistics (MIB2, RMON, SMON)
  • Diagnostic SW

MODEL OF OPERATION

MEA supports (in parallel);

  • IEEE 802.1Q Customer Bridge
  • IEEE 802.1ad Provider Bridge
  • IEEE 802.1ad Provider Edge Bridge
  • IEEE 802.1ah Provider Backbone Bridge
  • IEEE 802.1ah Provider Backbone Edge Bridge
  • IPv4 Router
  • IPv6 Router
  • MPLS LER/LSR

SUPPORTED INTERFACES

Ethernet, 10M, FE, GE, 10GE
Synchronous Ethernet
Circuit Emulation
SONET, POS, VCAT, GFP, Ethernet over SONET

SUPPORTED DEVICES

X11-d200, X11-d240, X11-d240t

TM devices
Dune Networks; FAP20, FAP21

Memory devices
TCAM; Netlogic, IDT
SRAM: Cypress, Samsung
RLDRAM: Micron, NEC

Unified Fiber Access Application (UFA)

The UFA data plane software provides a feature-rich data plane software for platforms targeting unified fiber access supporting PON, point-to-point Ethernet, fiber-to-the-node or mobile backhaul.

In compliance with Carrier Ethernet standards, this software provides a reference access data plane solution, which can be customized to support vendor or service provider specific access designs for e.g. policy enforcement, subscriber identification and multicast snooping and replication.

The UFA data plane software is designed for the AX Family of programmable Ethernet switches.

Please contact sales@xelerated.com for more information about the UFA software.

Key features

  • Feature-rich forwarding plane
  • Compliance to Carrier Ethernet standards
  • Customizable for system vendor differentiation

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