A PARALLEL HARDWARE APPROACH TO IMPLEMENT NETWORK PROTOCOLS

The dramatic increase in the operating bandwidth of current communication networks requires a very high processing speed for communications protocols to offer users real broadband services. Although there are different causes determining slowness in protocol processing, some implementation approaches for communication protocols seem to be the most limiting factor. This paper proposes a parallel architecture, based on VLSI components, to implement the OSI stack system in HSLANs and MANs. The proposed architecture is coupled with a model based on Petri nets which can characterize the implementation of each level according to the necessary requirements. We show that a hard protocol, as the data link layer, implemented according to the proposed architecture can effectively work at a data rate which is adequate for current networks. © 1994 Academic Press. All rights reserved.