Router using clock synchronizer for distributed traffic control

• US 20050254480A1
• Filed: 05/09/2005
• Published: 11/17/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 05/17/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Yang Soon Cha
• Original Assignee: Yang Soon Cha
• Inventors: Kim, Kicheon
• Granted Patent: US 7,583,683 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/351
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 3/0685 Clock or time synchronisation in a node; Intranode synchronisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/60 Router architectures

Abstract

A router using clock synchronizer is invented for distributed traffic control for QoS (quality of service) guarantee of real-time traffic in packet switching network such as the Internet. The real-time traffic includes voice and video and should be transmitted in a certain time limit. Otherwise, the quality of the traffic is affected and the information is no longer useful. Packet scheduler in the router transmits packets within the time limit. However, the packet scheduler is not fast enough compared to the link speed and the size of the router. This invention uses a plurality of processors and almost identical time for each processor. The traffic control algorithm can be performed independently by each processor. Thus, the processing speed of the entire router can be raised

Claims

1. A router including multiple processors or processing elements and a clock synchronizer, wherein the router performs real-time traffic control based on common synchronized time provided by a clock synchronizer.

2. The router as claimed in claim 1, wherein the clock synchronizer makes the time of each module almost identical by providing common clock and reset signals to line interface and switching modules.

3. The router as claimed in claim 1, wherein the clock synchronizer provides the content of the time register directly to the other modules.