Vector Label Switching (VLS): A High-Performance Switching Architecture for Future Internet

Abstract

One of the major bottlenecks of high performance IP network is related to the operation of switching nodes beside the link bandwidth. There are obvious drawbacks in packet forwarding of the conventional IP and MPLS networking architecture. In this paper, we propose an innovative concept: Vector Label Switching (VLS) architecture that supports high performance and low cost for the core Internet. Similar to MPLS, a label based on source routing information is attached to packets for fast interconnection purpose rather than an option as source-routing in conventional IP framework. The proposed architecture requires neither table lookup nor header replacing in the router/switch, and labeled packets will be quickly forwarded through Label Stripping algorithm. The packet processing unit can be made simple because the operation for packet forwarding is simple in VLS. As a result, the price and energy consumption of a switch/router can be evidently cut down. The significant performance improvement of the proposed architecture is proven through mathematical analysis and simulation in this paper.