System IS-IS : a routing based resource registry to support distributed routers

Abstract

The rapidly increasing scale and traffic of the Internet has prompted the need for larger routers to handle the load. However, building bigger routers with more state means that they take longer to startup and restart, and any amount of down-time will cause a significant disruption to users. As such, new router architectures are being built as distributed redundant software systems such that restarting and failure of individual sections of a router will have a less noticeable effect on the users. To provide a foundation for this type of software architecture, we envisioned the need for a distributed resource registry to promote discovery and communica-tion amongst redundant processes running in such a router. SIS-IS was designed to achieve this goal, with the initial prototype showing promising evidence that it is a viable solution to the problem.