IP forwarding performance analysis in the presence of control plane functionalities in a PC-based Open Router

Nowadays, networking equipment is realized by using decentralized architectures that often include special-purpose hardware elements. The latter considerably improve the performance on one hand, while on the other they limit the level of flexibility. Indeed, it is very difficult both to have access to details about internal operations and to perform any kind of interventions more complex than a configuration of parameters. Sometimes, the "experimental" nature of the Internet and its diffusion in many contexts suggest a different approach. This type of need is more evident inside the scientific community, which often encounters many difficulties in realizing experiments. Recent technological advances give a good chance to do something really effective in the field of open Internet equipment, also called Open Routers (ORs). The main target approached in this paper is to extend the evaluation of the OR forwarding performance proposed in [1], by analyzing the influence of the control plane functionalities.